


Redefining Normal

by XILVerify



Series: Dolls [7]
Category: ASTRO (Band), BTOB, Big Byung (Band), GOT7, Tiny-G, VIXX
Genre: ASTRO Continues To Be The Goodest Boys, Aftermath of Torture, Aftermath of Violence, Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Artist MJ, BamBam is the Sassiest Boi, Big Byung Bonding, Blood and Injury, Eunwoo Is There Too, Everyone Needs A Hug, Families of Choice, Fluff and Angst, GOT7 Are A Loud Chaotic Mess As Per Usual, Gen, Got7 are minature sized okay, Hongbin is Very Tired of Being the Blind Seer Archetype, Hurt/Comfort, Hyuk Also Gets In on the Adopting Game Surprisingly Enough, In This or Any Other Universe JB is Soft For Nora, Jackson Needs a Hug, Jinyoung is mom, Just Right (MV), Ken Nearly Kills a Man, Leo Just Wants to Hug Every Baby, Mark is the Most Patient Man on Earth, Moonbin is a Bro, N Adopts EVERYONE, Physical Disability, Platonic Cuddling, Platonic Relationships, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Trauma, Ravi Hates Bugs, Recovery, Rocky lives up to his name, So is Jinjin, Team as Family, Tiny-G Cameos, VIXX Needs Therapy 2k18, Whump, Yoon Sanha is an Actual Puppy in Human Form, Youngjae is the Group Acrophobic (save him), Yugyeom is Not the Youngest (for once), like in the MV, little people, why is that not a tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-26
Updated: 2019-03-16
Packaged: 2019-07-17 19:52:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 35,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16102637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/XILVerify/pseuds/XILVerify
Summary: Lost, injured, frightened, and alone in an unfamiliar city, Jackson fears that he may never find his way home again. The world is a big place when you’re only four inches tall, after all. However, a chance meeting with a set of living dolls, also lost, injured, frightened, and alone in their own way, may just be the best thing that could have happened to both parties right then in the long run.(or: GOT7 is Tiny and Loud [feat. Tiny-G], Jackson needs a long nap, VIXX starts coming to terms with their PTSD, and Astro continues to win the Most Helpful Bois Award)王☩王☩王☩王☩王☩王☩王“There is no one way to recover and heal from any trauma. Each survivor chooses their own path or stumbles across it.”― Laurie Matthew





	1. Just Right

**Author's Note:**

> Because I just _can’t heckin’ stay away_ from this AU for any significant amount of time, apparently, so here’s another installment for you all. My first time writing GOT7 (from their [Just Right MV](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrdk3IGcau8)), too! I do hope I did alright. ^^; As a PSA, some concepts and worldbuilding introduced in this first chapter may not make sense if you haven’t read the other fics in this series, but it can probably stand on its own if you want to give it a go regardless. Later chapters will be a bit more complicated, but we’ll get there when we get there. 
> 
> Please enjoy!

“Jackson? Jackson, come on, get up.” Jackson blearily cracked open one eye to find Mark standing over him, jogging his shoulder insistently. “It’s the first day of school, Jackson. You know what that means.”

 

“Don’ wanna go to school, five more minutes,” Jackson slurred groggily, grabbing Mark’s arm and rolling over in bed, pulling the other down onto the mattress with him with the motion.

 

“Ack!” Mark flailed, landing on the sheets and blankets in an ungainly heap as Jackson possessively snuggled his captive arm like a stuffed animal and tried his level best to go back to sleep. An insistent jab to his side made the blonde yelp and curl away from the ticklish contact. “Don’t make me get Jinyoung, Jackson. You know I will.”

 

 “Fine, fine, I’m up, I’m up,” Jackson grumbled, laboriously sitting up in bed and staring blankly through half-lidded eyes at the wallpaper, still holding tightly to Mark’s arm. Ugh. Waking up was the _worst_. But Jinyoung bodily dragging him out of bed and down the stairs was even worse than worst, though, so it was best to cut his losses while he could. Why did he have to get up this early, anyway? What was he supposed to do today again? There was something he had to do today. Something… important. Something about…

 

“It’s the first day of school!” he shrieked, suddenly very, very awake. “Mark! Mark, it’s the first day of school!”

 

“You don’t say,” Mark said, completely deadpan as his arm was shaken about like a ragdoll in Jackson’s excitement.

 

“Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, there’s so much to do!” Jackson sprang out of bed, crossed the room in a single bound and started rifling through his and Mark’s shared wardrobe for some clothes. “Is everyone else up?” he asked, finally settling on a pink shirt, his favorite comfy green sweater, and some black pants, with a bright green belt to complete the ensemble.

 

“Just Jinyoung and Yugyeom, from the sound of it,” Mark replied, getting up to fix his mussed hair in the mirror  on one of the walls of their room as Jackson shucked off his pajamas and began to change. “Birdie, too; I heard her alarm go off about fifteen minutes ago. Though if the rest of them weren’t woken up by your screaming, I don’t think anything less than a foghorn going off by their ears will do the job.”

 

“Jinyoung can thank me later,” Jackson said absently, slipping his feet into a pair of bright green sneakers and stomping a couple times to make sure they were on securely while coming his fingers through his hair to straighten out the worst of the tangles. “Alright, ready!”

 

“I’m impressed, I think that’s a new record,” Mark observed as the two opened the door to their room and met Jinyoung getting ready to venture into JB and Youngjae’s room.

 

“Ah good, you both are up already,” Jinyoung observed. “You can go help Birdie get ready while I get the others up. Jackson, you make sure Birdie doesn’t try to experiment anymore with her new makeup kit; that might make her late and we don’t want that.” Jackson nodded enthusiastically.

 

“Mark, you start making sure Birdie’s pencil case has everything it needs. And keep an eye on the clock while you’re at it, make sure we don’t run out of time.” Mark saluted smartly, the motion ruffling the colored streaks in his blond bangs. “The rest of us will work on getting the cereal and her backpack ready. Once I convince them to wake up, that is.” He sighed tiredly and headed into JB and Youngjae’s room, but Jackson didn’t see what happened after that, because he was too busy thumping down the stairs two by two to notice. He kicked open the front door of the dollhouse the seven tiny boys lived in (eliciting a _“Jackson, if you break that door down again, I swear-!”_ from Mark, who was following at a more sedate pace) and immediately made a beeline for Birdie’s vanity table.

 

It was a bit of a walk for someone of his size, but Jackson was so excited that he didn’t even notice, all but sprinting the entire way there. He was busy clambering up one of the many small ladders thoughtfully set up next to all of Birdie’s furniture when the girl emerged from her bathroom with a towel wrapped around her head, dressed in a very cute blue dress with yellow polka dots.

 

“Morning, Birdie!” Jackson called cheerfully, pulling himself up onto the pink and white surface of the table. 

 

“Good morning, Jackson,” she replied with a lot less enthusiasm than usual, plunking down on the padded stool, shoulders slumped dejectedly. 

 

“Hey now, why the long face?” Jackson asked concernedly, leaping up and plunking himself down cross-legged onto one of the drawers atop the table so he could be as close to eye level with her as possible. “Are you feeling okay?”

 

She shrugged, listlessly toweling off her hair. “Fine.”

 

“You don’t look fine,” Jackson replied dubiously. “We can always tell when something’s bothering you, baby bird.”

 

“You’ll think it’s silly.”

 

“Try me.” Jackson leaned forward expectantly. “Come on, you can tell me. I won’t judge.”

 

Birdie let out a long, loud sigh through her nose. “I just… what if Ahmee and Elle make fun of me again this year? Because of my dumb glasses and stupid freckles?” She glared at herself in the mirror, wrinkling her dappled nose distastefully.

 

“ _That’s_ what you’re worried about?” Jackson exclaimed incredulously. “Birdie, your freckles are cute! And so are your glasses. How many times do we have to tell you this before you believe us?”

 

“You’re supposed to think that, you’re my constructs,” Birdie mumbled, averting her eyes and fishing around in the other drawer for some hair ties. “It’s like Papa saying I’m pretty; of course he’d say that, he’s my papa.”

 

Jackson’s eyes narrowed. Okay, time to nip this in the bud before Birdie’s entire first day of school was ruined. He jumped off the drawer and flopped over her wrist, forcing her to take notice of him. “Hey, I still have eyes, don’t I? Come on, Birdie, you know me. I don’t flatter people; if you had something about yourself you needed to fix, don’t you think I’d tell you? It’s my job, after all. It’s all our jobs. If we tell you there’s nothing about yourself you need to change, then can’t you believe us?”

 

“I suppose so,” Birdie replied, starting to smile.

 

“You just suppose?” Jackson pouted up at her. “Come on, Birdie, I know you can do better than that.”

  
“Okay, okay, I know so,” she amended herself, a full grin finally breaking over her face as she gently picked Jackson up and set him back down atop the other drawer.

 

“ _That’s_ better,” he said, beaming back. He shoved the drawer beneath him open with his feet, flopped down on his belly, and began rooting around inside it for some cute hair decorations for Birdie. “And if anyone tries to tell you otherwise, you can tell them to go jump in a snake.”

 

“It’s lake, Jackson,” Birdie gently corrected, giggling that sweet giggle they all loved so much as she put her hair up into pigtails and started to plait them. “’Jump in a _lake_.’”

 

“It should be snakes,” Jackson muttered, finally pulling out two bright red hair ribbons. “Snakes are way scarier.”

 

“Very true,” she acquiesced, finishing with one braid and moving onto the other.

 

“Lakes and snakes aside, how do you like these?” Jackson asked, holding up the hair ribbons for Birdie to inspect. “I thought they’d look extra nice with your blue dress.”

 

Birdie took them and held them up to her hair to see how they’d look before evidently deciding she liked what she saw. As she started tying them to the top of her pigtails, Jackson continued to chat with her about whatever came to mind, doing his best to put her into a good headspace before her day properly started. He was also able to convince her to go light on the makeup from the brand new kit her papa had recently bought her for her twelfth birthday, so that ultimately she just put on some blush and lip gloss and called it a day.

 

“Thank you, Jackson,” she said when she was finally finished with her morning routine, holding out her palm for him to climb on. “For helping me get ready. And for cheering me up. I don’t know what I would do without you.”

 

“No problem, I love being able to help you get ready to go places!” Jackson beamed, clambering onto Birdie’s hand, happily kicking his legs back and forth as she lifted him up. “It’s the best thing ever. Except for when you come back, that is, that’s even better.”

  
“Hey!” came BamBam’s indignant voice from the desk behind them. “What are we, chopped liver?”

 

“I don’t know what I would do without you boys, either,” Birdie added without missing a beat as she turned, Jackson in hand, and walked the few paces over to her desk, where BamBam, Youngjae, and Yugyeom had managed to pour a bowlful of multicolored, sugary cereal for her, only spilling a couple dozen pieces or so in the process. She set Jackson down before crouching down to collect Mark, JB, and Jinyoung from where they’d been going over her backpack and school supplies, and deposited them on the desk as well.

 

Once all seven boys were gathered, Birdie carefully poured milk over the cereal from the container sitting on her desk - which was enchanted by the local milk provider to always stay cold until all the liquid was drained from it, cutting down on refrigeration requirements – and began to shovel spoonfuls of cereal in her mouth while Mark and Jinyoung drilled her on some times tables, division tables, and particularly tricky spelling words from the previous year. 

 

Meanwhile, Jackson sat himself down somewhere near the back of the desk and absently nibbled on a stray cereal crumb, JB to one side of him, and Youngjae on the other. He didn’t really need it – none of them needed food or water, technically, since the ambient magic saturating the apartment and storefront was more than enough to sustain them even if they weren't already situated in the Sash's mercantile district, which already had an overabundance of stray magic floating around from all the enchanted stores – but he enjoyed getting to savor the taste and the texture all the same. Not content to stay put like the rest of them, BamBam and Yugyeom scaled Birdie’s braids, which were resting on the table as she ate, and swung back and forth on them like they were rope swings, giggling all the while. Jackson could tell JB itched to tell them to knock it off and let Birdie concentrate on her spelling words, but she looked so happy that he didn’t have the heart to do so.

 

Once she had finished her cereal, Yugyeom tugged on her braid. “Spin for us, Birdie?” he asked, giving her his best puppy dog eyes as he begged for one of their favorite games, BamBam joining in immediately. Obligingly, she pushed back her chair and stood, moving to the center of her room. She then started twirling in place, making her braids fly out while Yugyeom and BamBam held on for dear life, laughing breathlessly.

 

Jinyoung made them stop after only about half a minute of this, worried as always that Birdie would get dizzy and fall over or the boys would lose their grip and go careening across the room into a wall. Birdie pouted a bit but finally slowed to a stop, gently plucking the tiny boys off her braids and hugging them to her chest before placing them on her desk with the rest of them. BamBam and Yugyeom were still giggling from all the excitement, draping themselves over Jackson and Youngjae, respectively.

 

“You really should try that sometime, Jacks,” BamBam suggested, grinning like the Cheshire cat as he hung off the shorter construct’s shoulders. “I think you’d enjoy it.”

  
“ _You’d_ enjoy watching me scream my head off, you mean,” Jackson retorted wryly. “Never in a million years will you maniacs convince me to try that.”

 

“You’re no fun,” BamBam pouted.

 

“I think he’s perfectly reasonable,” Youngjae interjected.

 

“Thank you, Youngjae,” Jackson replied with dignity, just as Yugyeom snickered.

 

“You would,” their tallest said, poking Youngjae in the side and receiving an elbow to the ribs for his sass. “Scardy cats, the both of you.”

 

“Settle down, kids,” JB cut in before Youngjae and Jackson could administer proper retaliation for that comment, just as Birdie straightened up with her backpack and slipped it on.

 

“Alright, I guess I’m off,” told them, giving them all a parting pat on the head before gathering up her dishes and the empty milk carton, finally looking ready to face whatever the day might throw at her. They all waved goodbye as she left, calling encouragement after her until they couldn’t hear her footsteps going down the stairs anymore.

 

After that, it was time for cleanup. Youngjae, Mark, and Jinyoung stayed behind to gather up the spilled cereal and wipe away any stray drops of milk on the desk, as well as generally organize the surface space, while the rest of them headed to the bathroom to wipe down the counters and make sure everything was tidied. Jackson generally wasn’t that fond of bathroom duty, but complaining about it never even entered his mind; he would do anything to help Birdie, and if that meant mopping up water from the floor with a rag larger than he was, well, then he’d deal. Besides, the monotony of the work was oftentimes broken up by the boys chatting amongst themselves as they worked, and at one point, Youngjae started singing one of their favorite songs, and the rest of them quickly joined him.

 

So cleanup time passed quickly, even though it had to have been at least a couple hours since they started, and soon, the seven tiny boys met up in the middle of their girl’s room to discuss what to do next.

 

“I think we should go visit the girls downstairs!” BamBam suggested brightly. “They can always use extra help with the new toys. I want to see how their new dollhouse is coming along, too.”

 

“And you’re totally not just saying this because you want to see Mint specifically, right?” Jinyoung teased, eliciting snickers from the other five as BamBam turned an interesting shade of beet red.

 

“I just thought they might want some help is all,” the younger construct retorted defensively. “Hey, but if you guys don’t want to go down…”

 

“Hey, did any of us say that?” Yugyeom asked innocently, draping one of his long arms over his roommate’s shoulders. “We all like seeing the girls, you know that.”

 

All the boys nodded in agreement. They indeed were very fond of the four house brownies they’d been modeled after, and the feeling seemed to be mutual.

 

“But, before we go,” Yugyeom continued. “JB, I think you owe me that rematch first.”

 

“Oh, you’re on,” JB replied, a competitive gleam igniting in his eyes.

 

“I call shotgun!” Jackson immediately crowed, taking off for the garage connected to their dollhouse at a dead run 

 

“Not if I get there first!” BamBam yelled, hot on his heels.

 

Jackson dove into the battery-powered, hot pink convertible parked in their garage just seconds ahead of his pursuer. “HA! I win!” BamBam stuck his tongue out and kicked at the door in response, annoyed at losing even with the longer reach of his legs.

 

“Don’t! do that,” JB scolded, catching up to them at a light jog and glaring at them both. “You scuff her paint, you’re on bathroom detail by yourself for a week, _got it_?”

 

“Sorry,” BamBam apologized meekly, climbing into the backseat of the car without further fuss. Jackson didn’t blame him. JB got… _protective_ … where his car was concerned. It’d been a gift from Birdie when their family had consisted of just him and Jinyoung, and it was easily his most treasured possession. He even treated it like it was alive at times. Messing with it was the one surefire way of swiftly earning their leader’s wrath.

 

“No harm done,” JB replied, mollified. He slid into the driver’s seat with practiced ease. “Just be more careful next time, okay? By the way, where’s Mark?” he asked as he drove the car out of the garage to park beside Youngjae. Their youngest made a face, but gamely climbed into the seat behind JB, unwilling to be left entirely out of the fun.

 

“Said something about practicing his kickflip,” Yugyeom replied, going over to a plastic zebra figurine standing in a stall near the back of the garage. It twitched an ear as he approached and rubbed its muzzle with one hand. “He went back to his room to get his skateboard. I don’t think he’ll be joining us today.”

 

“And Jinyoung?” 

 

“Count me out,” Jinyoung said from somewhere above them. The boys in the car all looked up to see him lounging contently in a doll-sized beach chair on his favorite perch on one of the windowsills, well out of the way of any potential mayhem. “I’m not in the mood for whiplash today.”

 

“My driving’s not _that_ bad,” JB retorted, offended. “And that was one time!”

 

“One time was enough, thanks.”

 

“Your loss,” Yugyeom replied, riding out bareback on the animate zebra figurine, which Mark had jokingly named Coco back when it was still just an inert toy. Now, thanks to Birdie’s papa, she was a construct like them, if much less sophisticated and complex, functioning almost like a sort of pet for the tiny family, as well as another mode of transportation when JB didn’t feel like sharing his car. “You ready to do this, JB?”

 

“I was born ready,” JB grinned fiercely.

 

“Enough talk,” Jackson interjected, bouncing impatiently in his seat. “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!”

 

“Patience is a virtue, grasshopper,” BamBam said sagely from behind him.

 

“Who are you calling grasshopper, shrimp?”

 

“On your mark, get set, go!” called Jinyoung from his perch up on the windowsill before things could escalate any further. Yugyeom urged Coco forward with a whoop, JB gunned the accelerator, and they were off.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

“So, who won?” Mark wandered over as his five brothers finally parked Coco and the car back in the garage, dragging his skateboard behind him. “After the fifth race it kind of looked like it just devolved into a game of high speed chase.”

 

“Eh, I lost count,” Jackson replied. “I _think_ Yugyeom won, though? Coco doesn’t run out of batteries, the car does.”

 

“Don’t listen to him, Nora.” JB patted the car’s hood comfortingly while shooting Jackson a dirty look. “You did _just fine_.”

 

“God preserve us if Papa ever decides to animate that thing, too,” BamBam muttered, before two hands abruptly slapped themselves over his mouth.

 

“ _Don’t_ give him any ideas,” hissed Yugyeom frantically, sharing identical panicked looks with Mark over BamBam’s head. “He’d move into the garage, and we’d never see him again.”

 

“Hey, I, for one, am down with that,” Youngjae interjected. “I’d finally have a bedroom all to myself.”

 

Jackson smacked him on the arm. “Not helping, genius.” Youngjae smacked him back, Jackson retaliated, and the altercation quickly turned into a full-blown slap fight.

 

“Shall we go then, gentlemen?” Jinyoung asked breezily, having descended from his perch on the windowsill. He turned around to find Jackson and Youngjae flailing at each other blindly, Yugyeom and Mark hemming in BamBam with their hands over his mouth while he tried ineffectually to squirm away, and JB caressing the hood of his car like someone petting a beloved cat. “Never mind, I rescind that last part.”

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Eventually the commotion died down and order – or what passed for order in their household – was restored, and all seven tiny boys migrated over to the bedroom door. They were nowhere near big enough to open it by themselves, it being several times larger than they, but a much smaller door, about the size of a mouse hole, had been built into the wall beside it, allowing the boys or any other enterprising tiny person to enter and depart at their leisure. Similarly, a small, jerry-rigged, doll-sized tram had been carefully constructed against the wall that went down the stairs, large enough to safely hold a total of four little bodies safely. Jinyoung, BamBam, Mark, and Yugyeom reached it first and piled on, leaving the other three to wait for the next trip.

 

About five minutes passed, and Jackson and JB were competing to see who could stand on their heads the longest between the two of them (while Youngjae surreptitiously tried to knock them over), when a distant rumble of thunder caused them all to flinch.

 

“Aww man, I hate thunderstorms,” Jackson groused, feeling himself wobble dangerously. Deciding to cut his losses before he fell flat on his face, he flipped over, righted himself, and stood in one fluid movement. “And today of all days! Could the timing be any worse?”

 

“We don’t _know_ it’s going to rain,” JB said, ever pragmatic, following him up. “It could blow over without even raining at all. That does happen sometimes, especially in this place.”

 

“True,” Jackson nodded, just as Youngjae tugged on both their sleeves.

 

“Guys… were all the windows closed before we left?”  

 

The three looked at each other, then as one, looked back toward the tiny door they’d just come out of. Skittering back to the door, they tentatively peeked back into the room, and sure enough, there, on the far side above Birdie’s bed, one of her windows was open, the curtains blowing gently in the breeze from outside.

 

Youngjae said what all three of them were thinking. “If it starts raining, Birdie’s bed will get soaked. She’ll have to change the sheets, and have even more work to do this afternoon, on top of all her homework.”

 

“Well, we can’t have that,” JB said, resolute. “We’ll just have to close it before we go down, just in case.”

 

“Hey, why don’t we play rock-paper-scissors to see who should go?” Jackson suggested. “The window shouldn’t be that hard to close, and this way the others don’t get held up.”

 

“Tempting… but no,” JB finally said after giving the notion serious thought. “We’ll all go together. Just to make sure we can close it. If we hurry, the others shouldn’t be missing us too much.”

 

Jackson and Youngjae nodded, and the three set out on the long trek back across the room. JB soundly vetoed Jackson’s suggestion they take the car to get there faster, saying ‘she needed her rest’ and earning himself surreptitious eyerolls from the other two. Once they reached the bed, Youngjae noticed that a few of Birdie’s stuffed animals were out of place on the bed and offered to fix them while the other two went up and closed the window. He’d follow them up if they needed extra help. Knowing that their youngest was terrified of heights and preferred to not climb up things more than he could help, JB and Jackson agreed to this and began to scale one of the curtains hanging from the window.

 

Jackson reached the top first, and gave the open window a critical look. He did note with some relief that it looked like the dark clouds overhead would end up blowing over without too much, if any rainfall. He was just about to jump up and try closing the window by hanging off the frame, when a huge crow alighted on the windowsill.

 

JB, who was just about to pull himself up over the edge of the windowsill, abruptly lost his balance at the sudden flurry of movement and fell with an unmanly yelp back onto the bed, only narrowly missing Youngjae on the way down. All Jackson could manage was an undignified squeal of terror at the unexpected sight, cowering in fear at how much bigger the bird was than him. It blinked back at the tiny, loud creature, completely unfazed, ruffled its feathers imperiously, and then began picking at the nearby bowl of sparkly beads that Birdie occasionally used to make necklaces, bracelets, and little pipe cleaner fish and snakes with.

 

“Hey!” Jackson exclaimed, fear temporarily forgotten in the wave of sheer indignation that overtook him. “Those are Birdie’s! Shoo! Go on, get out of here!” He ventured closer and flapped his hands at the crow, hoping to scare it away. It simply cawed harshly at him in response, snatched up a string of colorful beads lying beside the bowl, and flew away. Jackson experienced a brief moment of pure triumph… before he found himself yanked violently out the window right along with the crow. Before he knew it, he was dangling dozens and dozens of feet above the town, kept aloft only by the string of beads tangled around his right ankle. Jackson suddenly became aware of a high-pitched screeching sound, only barely audible over the rush of wind in his ears. What was…? Oh yeah, that’d be him, whoops.

 

After a few terrifying seconds of flailing blindly in the wind, he managed to grab onto the crow’s leg with his arms and then his legs, clinging for dear life and still screaming his head off. The crow seemed to become aware that it had a passenger, and dipped and pivoted a few times in the air, trying to shake him off. Jackson simply held on tighter and screamed louder. Finally, the crow alighted on the gutter lining a roof and began clawing at him with its other foot and pecking with its beak to detach the annoying pest. In the commotion, as it tried to dislodge him, its claws caught on Jackson’s leg, tearing three long, deep gouges into his flesh. The abrupt shock of pain caused him to briefly loosen his hold, which was enough for the crow to dislodge him, knocking him off the roof in the process.

 

Jackson felt the bottom drop out of his stomach as he fell, too terrified to even make a single sound… and then his back collided with something black and pliant, giving way beneath him with a loud crackle of plastic and breaking the worst of his fall. A trash bag. His body, which didn’t seem to be obeying any of his frantic commands to _move_ , limply slid off the trash bag and fell another two feet onto the unforgivably hard, damp concrete. His vision whited out as he landed heavily on his right side, all the breath in his lungs forcibly expelling itself in a single agonized wheeze.

 

All Jackson could do for the next few minutes was lie there awkwardly on his side and gasp desperately for air as the world faded in and out of focus. Finally, once breathing became a little easier and the excruciating stabs of pain shooting throughout his body every time he moved even the slightest bit subsided slightly, he laboriously rolled onto his front, pulled himself up onto his elbows, and blearily took stock of his surroundings through the tears that blurred his vision. A huge brick wall loomed over him in from his left and a line of towering trees jutted into the sky on his right, glimpses of a green field and more buildings beyond it,  with the sun beginning to break through the dark clouds overhead. Trash and discarded construction and moving equipment littered the narrow  strip of concrete, with a large pile of bags - including the one he’d fallen onto - and boxes to his immediate left. Feeling terrifyingly exposed in such a huge, unfamiliar space, Jackson instinctively dragged his aching, battered body, centimeter by centimeter, into the space between a stack of wooden pallets and another of empty cardboard boxes.

 

Once he felt a little safer and not quite as exposed, he laboriously rolled onto his back and pushed himself up into a sitting position so he could take stock of his leg. He almost didn’t want to look, terrified of what he’d find, but he forced himself to do so. An instinctual whimper left him as he saw the damage, the sheer amount of bright red blood soaking his tattered pants and dripping onto the concrete beneath him. He felt lightheaded, the world going blurry in front of him for a second, before he shook his pounding head hard and smacked himself on the cheek.

 

“No, get a hold of yourself, Jackson,” he told himself sternly, trying to calm down his racing heart as he wiped away what he could of the tears and grime staining his cheeks. The sound of his voice was somewhat comforting, and he gradually found himself calming down a little.

 

But now that he felt like he wasn’t immediately about to faint, a sudden thought occurred to him, and terror gripped him like a vice. How was he going to get back to his brothers? To Birdie? He had no idea where he was, and the world Outside was so vast and unfamiliar; someone could step on him by accident! Something could _eat_ him! Not to mention that he knew he had to be injured pretty badly, what with his entire right side feeling like one large bruise from when he fell, not to mention the absolute bloody mess that was his leg.

 

Well, he reasoned, trying his best to keep from outright panicking, maybe if he tried to stand, he could take closer stock of his surroundings and figure out what to do next? It was worth a shot. With immense effort, he grabbed onto one of the wooden slats of a pallet next to him and shakily pulled himself to his feet. The second he tried to put any sort of weight on his right leg, though, his ankle immediately buckled underneath him, and he sat back down hard on the cobblestone, curling into the fetal position with a sob as the action sent agonizing jolts of pain spearing throughout his entire body.

 

Once the pain lessened enough that he could mostly think clearly again, Jackson uncurled himself and pondered his next course of action. Clearly, there would be no standing for him anytime soon. So then-

 

He abruptly registered a shuffling noise to his left, coming from the boxes. As he watched, a huge, black rat scurried out from between the cardboard.  Jackson _screamed_ , long and piercingly and so loudly that the sheer volume made his throat ache. The rat was so spooked by the sudden, deafening noise that it turned right back around and bolted back the way it came with a high-pitched squeak.

 

Jackson clutched his chest as he watched it retreat, breathing hard, his own scream still echoing in his ears. What was he going to do if it got hungry and decided to come back to make a quick meal of him? He certainly was in no position to fight it off if it did.

 

Sudden, distant voices distracted him from his racing, terrified thoughts. His heart skipped a beat. Big People! Most of his experience with Big People, aside from Birdie and her papa, of course, came from books and TV and watching them pass by from the safety of Birdie’s windows, aside from the few that came into the antique store while he and his brothers ventured into the huge, intriguing space (which was technically against the rules, so they didn’t tend to do it much, anyway); he’d certainly never met any Outside before. What if these ones weren’t friendly? But, Jackson had to admit, on the other hand, they _could_ be friendly. They could help him get back to Birdie and his brothers! Faint hope kindled in Jackson’s heart at the thought, but it immediately dwindled at the thought that, on the other hand, they might _not_ be-

 

Light footsteps approached, and the voices grew louder. Male, from the sound of them. Fueled by a burst of panic-induced adrenaline, Jackson shuffled gracelessly back until his spine was pressed up against the brick behind him, cowering and trembling like a cornered mouse. Oh, what should he do? What should he _do_?

 

Amidst the whirlwind of disorientation and pain and sick dread churning in his gut, one thought rose to the forefront of his mind: He _knew_ they should have taken the stupid car.

 

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

**Notes** :

_**Youngjae is the maknae?? –** Yes, I know that in real life Yugyeom is the youngest member of Got7, but in this AU, the boys were created in the order that they joined JYP instead. So in this AU, their age order is JB, Jinyoung  > Mark, Jackson, BamBam, Yugyeom > Youngjae._

_**Brownies** – Got7 wasn’t actually the first group to have a “tiny person” concept; that honor belongs - as far as I can tell - to the girl group Tiny G in their 2013 release [“Minimanimo.”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-MXLmNnarQ) Therefore, in this fic, Tiny G came first, and Got7 was based on them, since they already lived in the house and all, doing normal brownie things like cleaning and helping with the family’s income situation (think the “Elves and the Shoemaker” fairytale, and you’ll get an idea of what they do). One of the members of Tiny G, Mint, is Thai, so I like to think her and BamBam would get along well if they ever met, hence their close friendship here._

_**Birdie** – The little girl from the Just Right MV, naturally. As for why I named her this, well, GOT7 fans are called “ahgases” or “baby birds” in Korean. It seemed appropriate. ;)_

_**Coco the zebra and Nora the car** – I had to include Mark’s beloved little pupper and JB’s precious kitty cat in this thing SOMEHOW, c'mon, how could I not?  
_


	2. I Still Wake Up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soooo, funny story, this chapter eventually became so big that I ended up having to split it in half. More content for you guys, I guess? ^^; There's a bit of a time differential between this and the first chapter, so just keep that in mind.
> 
> BTW, if you haven’t read the other fics in this series, I suggest you go do so now before continuing, as this chapter is a direct continuation of Erisette’s “Open the Door,” and you might feel a little bit lost if you’re not all caught up. For those of you who don’t have time for that, however, here’s a brief summary:
> 
> In this AU VIXX are six human-sized dolls fabricated out of magic by an evil, sadistic witch, who were routinely abused and tortured for her amusement. After becoming more than the mere mindless servants they were created to be, the dolls eventually escape from their abuser and into the outside world, where they come across a number of places and people (all referenced from various Kpop MVs), have some adventures, meet some new friends, and pick up a small kitten named Heart as an animal companion. Last we saw them, they’re rooming with six boys who work in a magical soda store (and who used to be bottles of soda themselves) while they try to find their footing and figure out what to do next. 
> 
> N = Starlight  
> Leo = Kitten  
> Ken = Sun  
> Ravi = Cedar  
> Hongbin = Laughter  
> Hyuk = Brother

**The previous morning…**

 

“You’re _sure_ you don’t want to come with us?” Jinjin asked. “There’s plenty of things to do in the Sash besides hang out with us at the D.Store, too, you know. You really want to stay here all day?”

 

“Thank you, but we’re sure,” Starlight nodded firmly, though Brother definitely detected a hint of regret in his expression. “We’ve done nothing but move from place to place for awhile. I think it would be good for us to take it easy for a bit. Besides, Kitten’s hands and foot and Sun’s knees aren’t fully healed yet; giving them time to rest would probably be good for them.”

 

“Don’t forget about your head, Starlight,” Kitten interjected from his place at Starlight’s back, his soft voice firm.

 

 “Do you have enough bandages?” Eunwoo cut in before Starlight could reply, sounding concerned. “Dressings need to be changed every couple days or so. If you run out, we do have a first aid kit in the cabinet behind the bathroom mirror. Yoojung put it there a couple months ago, just in case. I’ll show you.”

 

As he led Starlight to the bathroom, Moonbin approached the dolls with an armful of books, Sanha at his heels with two books of his own tucked under each arm. “Here,” he said, unceremoniously depositing the stack into a startled Cedar’s arms. “To help the time go faster. That should be enough for today at least. Let me know if you need more.”

 

“I picked these out!” Sanha chimed in. He held out a large, thin book with a number of people and odd creatures and devices printed on the cover to Brother. “Here, Brother, I thought you might like this one.”

 

Brother accepted it carefully, curiously studying the picture on the cover before looking back up at Sanha’s expectant face. Suddenly oddly shy, he mumbled, “Thank you.”

 

“You’re welcome,” Sanha beamed before holding the other book out to Laughter. “This one’s about toys,” he supplied helpfully when Laughter didn’t react. Brother surreptitiously nudged the visually impaired doll in the side, which prompted him to reach out cautiously, his fingers curling around the smaller book when they encountered it. Brother peered at the cover interestedly as Laughter lifted the book out of Sanha’s hands and brought it closer to his chest. There was a picture of a small, stuffed doll on it, a little brown and white creature of some sort with a ribbon around its neck, long, upright ears, a little pink nose, and small black eyes sitting in a patch of grass and colorful flowers.

 

“-And remember, there’s more paper in the lower left drawer if you need it,” MJ was saying to Sun over near the desk beside the wardrobe. He bent over and opened a drawer, pulling out two sizable boxes and setting them on the desk beside a container of markers and a stack of blank paper that already rested on it. “Markers are fun and all, but you can’t really blend colors with them the way you can with crayons and colored pencils.” He opened the boxes, displaying a vast array of pencils and shorter, stubbier cylinders that Brother supposed were the aforementioned crayons in an incredible variety of colors, some of which Brother had never even seen before.

 

Sun, for once, was absolutely speechless, staring openmouthed at the unthinkable bounty placed before him before a huge, delighted smile broke over his face. He bounced up and down on the balls of his feet jubilantly, and looked like he was seriously considering giving MJ a hug. He even reached out with one hand… and then faltered slightly, a sudden conflicted look appearing on his face and dimming his smile, before MJ noticed his hand, caught it, and gave it a light, knowing squeeze, smiling back just as brightly. Sun immediately perked back up at this, and his conflicted look disappeared as soon as it had come, leaving Brother to wonder if he’d imagined it.

 

Eunwoo and Starlight returned from the bathroom, and, with another round of goodbyes, the six soda constructs departed. Once they were left alone, Cedar immediately set his stack of books on the ground and spread them out, and the dolls flipped through them all curiously. They knew what books were, technically, just like they “knew” what snow was or ducks were, the but this was the first time they’d been able to really investigate them for themselves. A few of the books were full of nothing but line upon line of the odd black squiggles that had been scrawled on the window of Cedar’s cage back with _her_ , or that the dolls had seen here and there on various objects during their travels. Brother supposed they were meant to be decoration, maybe a spell or magic device of some sort, since the nice witches in the little house in the woods had used similar symbols in their books where they kept records of things. There _was_ a pleasing sort of symmetry to some of the shapes, and a few even stirred a vague kind of recognition at the back of his mind, like he was supposed to know what they were, but the knowledge was too deeply buried to be of any use. It was a feeling he was getting increasingly familiar with ever since he and his brothers had escaped _her_ clutches.

 

**_You don’t know what they are because you didn’t really escape. You’re just making all this up. None of this is real, and you know it._ **

 

 _Shut up_. Brother absently chewed on one of the knuckles of his left hand, the dull throb of pain reassuring in its normalcy. To distract himself further, he flipped open the book that Sanha had given him, and an involuntary, interested noise escaped him as he saw a diagram printed on the page of a mechanical object that looked like some sort of mode of transport. Red lines pointed to certain parts of the object, and part of the outer casing of it was removed, giving a view into the inner workings of the device. A brief perusal of the rest of the book’s pages showed that each one held similar diagrams of other objects and pictures of people and creatures using them.

 

Meanwhile, Sun swiftly selected a thick book full of colorful pictures of animals and birds and returned to the stack of paper and writing implements that had been set out for him. After arranging everything to his satisfaction on the floor, he opened the book to the first page and eagerly began to sketch out the large, vibrant bird that took up the entire page. Starlight followed him and sat near him on the floor, leg carefully positioned so that it was snugly pressed up against Sun’s, and avidly began flipping through a larger, thinner book filled with pictures of forests and mountains and vast expanses of water that teemed with creatures of all shapes and sizes.

 

“Here.” Laughter pressed the book that Sanha had handed off to him into the hands of the nearest doll, which happened to be Kitten.

 

“You don’t want it?” Kitten said, confused.

 

Laughter blinked his black-crossed eyes at them and shrugged. “Well, I looked at it, but it didn’t really do much for me.”

 

Kitten frowned slightly and took Laughter by the hand, leading him over near the other row of beds so they could sit together on one of the rugs. As they settled down, Heart leaped down from her perch on Kitten’s shoulder and pounced upon the loose lace of Laughter’s shoe, biting and kicking at the string ferociously. Laughter giggled at her antics, and when she showed no sign of getting bored with her new game anytime soon, he removed his shoe and carefully pulled the shoelace out. He dragged it across the floor and his lap for Heart to chase, still giggling delightedly as his broken eyes jerkily followed the little kitten’s movements as best they were able while she scrambled across his legs in her mad dash to capture the elusive string. Kitten observed the sight with soft eyes before contently leaning his head against Laughter’s shoulder and leafing through the small picture book the other had given him.

 

Brother felt a hand tug on his, and he amicably followed Cedar to the row of three beds they’d pushed together the previous night, forming one large bed. The soda boys had done the same with the row of beds lining the other side of the room, the arrangement allowing the two groups to sleep comfortably all together while ensuring that no one had to sleep on the floor. The two tallest dolls climbed onto the leftmost bed and stretched out on their stomachs side by side so that they could keep an eye on the rest of the room while still being able to look at the pictures in their books. 

 

The sun climbed higher in the sky. The dolls mostly stayed right where they’d planted themselves, used to staying mostly in one place, though every so often one or a couple would get up to move around, stretch, check up on the others (Starlight was the most common culprit of this), or retire to the bathroom to drink from the sink, still unaccustomed to the sensation of being able to move freely whenever and wherever they wished. The day passed, warm and quiet and peaceful, until…

 

“Sun?” Brother’s head snapped up at Starlight’s tone of voice. “Sun, what are you doing?”

 

Brother and Cedar exchanged a quick glance and pushed themselves into seated positions on their bed, just in time to see Sun draw a sixth line across his hand with the red marker he held. Then another. And another. An expression of acute confusion had etched itself onto his face, his eyes dazed and distant. As he began to mechanically draw a jagged streak down his scarred forearm, a hand grabbed his wrist, restraining him. Slowly, he raised his head to stare vacantly at Starlight, who looked more frightened than Brother had seen him in a long time.

 

“It… it doesn’t hurt, Smallest,” Sun finally replied numbly, as if bewildered by that fact. “But… it also does? I can feel it, in my head. My skin doesn’t feel it, but my mind does. It’s so _weird_ , Smallest, it’s so-”

 

Starlight unceremoniously yanked the marker out of Sun’s hand, capped it, and tossed it underneath the desk before pulling the sleeve of Sun’s sweater down from where it was pushed up around his elbow to cover his hand, obscuring the marks entirely. He picked up a bright blue crayon and curled Sun’s limp fingers around it.

 

“Here, Loud, how about you show me how it would look if it was blue instead?” Starlight suggested, voice light and soothing and belaying absolutely none of the tension Brother saw written into every fiber of his body. Sun didn’t respond, simply gazing down at his covered arm, at the blue crayon in his hand. For a long, long minute, Brother was afraid that Starlight’s efforts to distract Sun had been in vain and he had gone away entirely… but then Sun stirred, blinked, tightened his fingers around the crayon, and the entire room breathed a silent sigh of relief.

 

Once he’d reassured himself that Sun was back with them, Starlight crawled around Sun and sat behind him, legs to either side of him.

 

“I thought you wanted to see what the bird would look like in blue,” Sun protested, pouting, as Starlight hugged him tightly about his middle and rested his cheek on his back. He began to sketch out a new figure on a fresh piece of paper.

 

“I do,” Starlight assured him, voice suspiciously tight. “Surprise me. Make the best bird ever.”

 

Eyes alight with the challenge, Sun nodded and got to work in earnest, soon completely absorbed in his task. Starlight continued to hold him all the while, mostly hidden from the other dolls’ view. However, when Sun leaned forward to select a yellow pencil just out of his reach, Brother caught a glimpse of Starlight’s face.  He looked… sad. So, so sad. Angry, too. The way he used to look back _there_ when _she_ hurt the rest of them. And then Sun straightened up again, hiding Starlight from Brother’s gaze, but not before Brother caught a glimpse of the gleam of unshed tears glistening around Starlight’s tightly closed eyes.

 

**_He’ll look that way again soon, you know. Once you wake up._ **

 

 _Shut **up**_. Inexplicable fury boiled up inside of Brother, and his teeth reflexively clamped down on his finger again. Just before they could break the skin, however, a nudge to his shoulder distracted him just enough that they didn’t draw blood. Confused, he glanced to the side to see Cedar gazing at him in concern.

 

“Are you okay?” he rumbled quietly. Brother was overcome with the sudden urge to scream.

 

 _No!_ _I’m not okay! And neither are you! None of us are! Can’t you see that?_

 

“Yeah.” Cedar didn’t look completely convinced but accepted his answer readily enough once Brother reluctantly tucked his hand under his chest, and the two went back to their books.

 

The only other thing of note that happened that day was when the sun was getting lower in the sky, Cedar let out an undignified yelp of terror and shied into Brother’s side, whimpering and clutching the younger’s arm as if his life depended on it.

 

“What, what is it?” Brother demanded, ready to spring into action at a moment’s notice.

 

In response, Cedar pointed shakily at a large, brown insect scuttling across the floor in a zigzagging fashion, having emerged from under the wardrobe. Brother let out a relieved breath that it wasn’t something more serious, half amused and half annoyed. To be fair, though, while Brother had never really understood Cedar’s apparent irrational and inherent fear of insects, he had to admit that the way this one skittered across the concrete floor was… more than slightly unsettling.

 

Before any of them could react further, however, a small black blur suddenly pounced atop the bug. As the dolls watched in horrified fascination, Heart proceeded to gobble up her prey in a few, businesslike bites, legs, head, carapace, and all. Once she’d finished, she proceeded to lick her chops and thoroughly wash her face and paws before trotting back to Kitten, contently hunkering down on his leg and purring so loudly that Brother could hear her clearly even from across the room. Brother and Cedar exchanged an awed, slightly unsettled look before going back to their books. And if Cedar wasn’t going to comment on the way his hand was still hooked tightly around Brother’s arm, well, Brother wasn’t going to mention it, either.

 

Just as the moon began to rise in the sky, Jinjin and his brothers returned, laughing and smiling and chatting amongst themselves.

 

“Well, did you guys like the books?” Moonbin eagerly asked the moment he was in a position to do so.

 

“Oh yes, the ones with pictures were very interesting!” Sun replied brightly.

                                                                    

“Not that the ones with more black squiggles weren’t also interesting,” Starlight hastened to add, clearly not wanting to offend their hosts. “They just get samey after awhile, is all.”

 

Moonbin and the other boys gave them all odd looks at this. “Those… aren’t squiggles, though?” Moonbin finally said slowly. “They’re letters. They make words. You know, that you read?”

 

“Silly, mouths make words,” Sun giggled as if he thought Moonbin was telling a joke. “How can marks on a piece of paper talk?”

 

Moonbin looked at them all for another long moment before going over to where Kitten and Laughter sat and pointing to the picture book Kitten held. “Could I borrow that for a sec?” Kitten wordlessly handed it over. “Thanks.”

 

Opening the book up to a random page, he pointed to a clump of the black symbols beside a picture of a small child putting the long-eared, brown and white doll from the cover of the book into a hollow made of twigs and leaves and flowers. As he began to speak, Moonbin’s finger moved across the page from left to right, and then when he ran out of symbols on one line, he moved down to the next: “‘Near the house where they lived there was a wood, and in the long June evenings the Boy liked to go there after tea to play. He took the Velveteen Rabbit with him, and before he wandered off to pick flowers, or play at brigands among the trees, he always made the Rabbit a little nest somewhere among the bracken, where he would be quite cozy, for he was a kind-hearted little boy and he liked Bunny to be comfortable.’”  

 

“How did you do that?” Sun demanded once Moonbin had run out of symbols in that clump of text, looking as amazed as Brother felt. “Was it magic? It must be magic.” He turned to Starlight and tugged at his sleeve excitedly. “Like what Amber and her sisters have. How else could he have heard the squiggles speak to him, right? …Unless you heard it, too?”

 

Starlight shook his head, eyes wide. “No, I didn’t hear anything.”

 

“Me neither,” Brother chimed in, echoed by Cedar and Laughter while Kitten wordlessly shook his head. “What else do they say?” he asked Moonbin.

 

“All kinds of things,” Moonbin replied, closing the book. “This one’s a story about a little rabbit doll that became real because the little boy loved him so much-” A soft intake of breath could be heard from Starlight’s direction at this, and out of the corner of his eye, Brother saw him grab Sun’s hand tightly as Moonbin selected another book from the floor and held it up, “-And this one’s a story about two brothers going on a daring adventure to rescue their cat.” Kitten sat up straighter, hand curled around Heart’s small, fuzzy body while he hooked his other arm around Laughter’s. “Anything you could possibly want to know is in books.”

 

“ _Anything_?” Brother breathed, mind reeling with the possibilities of this statement.

 

“Anything,” Moonbin nodded.

 

As the dolls sat in silence, each processing this radical new concept in his own way, Cedar spoke up. “How do you do it? Did you learn how?”

 

“We just… do?” Sanha replied, looking puzzled. “We never learned; Yoojung built it into us, I guess. It’s like how we just talk. We don’t think about it, we just do it.”

 

Brother felt his heart sink a little at Sanha’s words, and Cedar visibly wilted next to him. He should have known. Of course _she_ wouldn’t have thought that her toys needed to be able to understand book-speech. It was stupid of him to think they could somehow do it, too.

 

“Hey, don’t look so down,” Jinjin said, seeing the dolls’ despondent looks. He smiled at them encouragingly. “Maybe there’s something we can do about this. Moonbin, MJ, come upstairs with me. Oh, and MJ, bring some paper and crayons and markers, we’re going to need them.” MJ tapped two fingers to his forehead and set about gathering the necessary supplies as the dolls watched curiously.

 

“The rest of you, just keep doing what you were doing. We’ll be back in about, oh, thirty minutes to an hour, probably.”

 

Something seemed to occur to Eunwoo as the three boys filed out the door, and he turned to the dolls. “Wait, so you’re saying you spent the entire day just looking at the pictures? You didn’t read _any_ of the books?”

 

The dolls all glanced at each other.

 

“…Yes?” Starlight finally ventured.

 

“Well, we need to fix that, then,” Eunwoo said emphatically, going through the books that Laughter had gathered up sometime during the day and carefully stacked according to size near where he and Kitten had been sitting. He selected one, crawled onto the soda boys’ row of beds, opened it to the first page, and began to speak: “Dorothy lived in the middle of the great Kansas prairies, with Uncle Henry, who was a farmer, and Aunt Em, who was the farmer’s wife.”

 

Sanha and Rocky quickly made themselves comfortable on the bed next to Eunwoo’s as he told the story the book was telling him, a story about a little girl and her little dog who were whisked away in their house by a huge, strong windstorm to another place where the house was dropped on a witch who was terrorizing the people who lived there (Brother felt a rush of immense, fierce satisfaction at that), and the girl’s journey to find a wizard (Eunwoo explained a wizard was like a male witch) who could help her get home. The six dolls listened intently, interjecting every so often with questions like “What’s a cyclone?” or “What’s a scarecrow?” and the time passed so quickly that it was almost a shock when the missing three boys turned up again.

 

“Where did you go for so long?” Starlight asked.

 

“It’s a surprise,” MJ said cheekily.

 

“That we’ll show you tomorrow,” Jinjin promised, nudging a giggling, unrepentant MJ in the ribs scoldingly. “For now, though, I think it’s time for us to turn in.”

 

“Aww, but I want to know what happens next!” Sun protested, pouting.

 

“Yeah, the story isn’t over, right?” Brother added. “Dorothy still has to go home. Unless Oz is her new home now?”

 

“The scarecrow still needs a brain, too,” Kitten piped up quietly.

 

“Nah, we have a long way to go yet,” Eunwoo assured them, showing them just how many pages were left. Brother’s eyes widened in astonishment that that much information could be contained in so small a space. “Don’t worry, we can read more tomorrow.”

 

“Yes!” Sanha cheered, flopping back onto Rocky, who had been peacefully reclining behind him. “Eunwoo never reads books aloud since we can all read them for ourselves. It’s really nice, I like it! It’s like when Yoojung tells us stories, except I already know how it’s going to end.”

 

“Be that as it may, tomorrow won’t come unless we go to bed,” Rocky wheezed, trying to shove Sanha’s long, thin body off of him. “Now get _off_ , you’re squashing me.” Sanha just grinned and sprawled even more heavily before Eunwoo took pity on the shorter boy, took hold of Sanha’s ankles, and dragged him bodily off the bed.

 

The room broke into a flurry of motion, with all twelve constructs changing into their sleeping clothes (called “pajamas” if Brother’s memory served correctly) and jostling for occupation of the small bathroom. Jinjin and Eunwoo had seemed scandalized when the dolls had tried to climb into bed and sleep in their normal clothes the night before, and had insisted on lending them all a new set of clothes specifically to sleep in. Brother privately rather thought this was kind of overkill – the dolls had all slept in their clothes their entire lives, after all – but if it made their hosts happy, then who was he to argue?

 

Therefore, Brother soon found himself clad in an oversized t-shirt and shorts that Eunwoo had lent him, since he was simply too broad for any of their pajamas to properly fit, and lying under the covers of the bed he and Cedar had been lying on off and on all day. Cedar was curled up at his back contently, one arm draped over Brother’s waist while the other snuggled a small, white, dog-shaped doll with a squished face and big, googly eyes. It technically belonged to Jinjin, but Jinjin had said the night before when he noticed Cedar eyeing it longingly that he rarely slept with it and Cedar was welcome to it as long as the dolls stayed with them.

 

Sun and Starlight emerged from the bathroom, Sun’s hands looking decidedly more ink-free than they had previously, and Sun took a running leap onto the middle bed beside Brother, shimmying under the covers and cuddling up with another small doll, this one a brown, horned creature wearing a gigantic pink hat that belonged to Moonbin. Starlight followed at a more sedate pace, cuddling with Sun the same way Sun cuddled with his doll, while Kitten curled protectively around Laughter on Starlight’s other side and Heart disappeared somewhere under the covers.

 

Someone turned the lights off, filling the room with a comfortable, quiet darkness. Cedar’s breathing quickly deepened behind him, and in front of him, Sun dropped off in a few minutes as well. For some reason, however, Brother couldn’t sleep. He kept running his hand over the cool, smooth sheets beneath him, stroking the pliable, soft fabric of his shirt, still unused to the sensation of softness. Back with _her_ , the only soft things he’d ever felt were the other dolls’ skin and hair. And _hers_ , but he didn’t want to think about that. He suddenly understood why Starlight sometimes wrapped himself up in the dirty blanket covering the couch in his cage when things were really bad, why he said it was like being hugged.

 

Speaking of Starlight…

 

“Go to sleep, Brother,” their eldest whispered at him over Sun’s shoulder, glaring with no real heat behind it.

 

Brother rolled his eyes, but obediently closed them. He still couldn’t seem to fall asleep, though. Finally, he cracked open one eye to see that Starlight was also still awake, gently stroking Sun’s scarred wrist. He shut his eye again before Starlight could notice, but that got him thinking.

 

Why was Starlight always the last one to fall asleep? Brother frowned slightly as he pondered this, mind going back to all the time they’d spent in her dungeon. Unless Starlight was very badly injured, he was always the very last one to fall asleep, and also almost always the first one to wake. Why was that? Did he feel like he had to, to keep watch over them? Or did he not want to sleep for some reason?  Either way, it couldn’t be very healthy.

 

Finally, after a long time, Starlight finally fell asleep as well, fingers stilling where they still curled gently around Sun’s wrist. Brother opened his eyes, regarding his two brothers silently, before hesitantly reaching out and lightly running the pads of his fingers across the scars that encircled Starlight’s own wrist, before trailing down to give Sun’s hand a light squeeze.

 

**_I can’t believe it took you this long to finally notice Smallest’s sleeping habits, idiot. At least now you can bring it up once She’s finished with you tomorrow so that he can start getting more sleep._ **

 

_Shut-!_

 

“Brother?”

 

Brother started slightly as Sun’s eyes fluttered open. He abruptly realized that he was squeezing Sun’s hand hard, too hard, while his other hand was halfway up to his mouth.

 

“I’m sorry!” he frantically apologized, shame filling his heart as he abruptly let go of Sun’s hand and shoved both his under the blanket. “I didn’t realize… I didn’t mean to…”

 

“’S okay,” Sun yawned, smiling at him groggily. “Didn’t really hurt. I’m fine.” He peered at Brother, brow crinkling slightly. “Are _you_ okay, though?”

 

_Why does everyone keep asking me that? Shouldn’t they be worrying about themselves?_

 

“Yeah, I’m alright.”

 

Sun gave him a deeply skeptical look. “No. Something’s bothering you. I can tell. Maybe I can help?”

 

Brother’s first instinct was to tell Sun to go back to sleep, still immensely guilty about waking him, but something stopped him. He’d hoped that the thoughts would go away after telling Starlight about them, but he’d had no such luck. Perhaps confiding in Sun _could_ help.

 

“Do you…” Brother trailed off, chewing his bottom lip before mustering every ounce of courage he possessed and pressing on. “Do you ever… do you ever get the feeling that this is all just a dream? That we didn’t really make it out… and we’re all still back with…?”

 

“Back with _her_? Sure.” Sun said it so matter-of-factly that all Brother could do for a few seconds was stare. “Especially that first day. That’s what’s bothering you?”

 

“It doesn’t bother _you_?” Brother replied incredulously, eyes wide.

 

“Sure it did, at first. But then I decided that if this was all a dream… well, I didn’t really care. I’d enjoy it for as long as possible, and when I woke up, I’d be able to tell all of you all about it. I mean, look at it this way; if we really were back _there_ , with _her_ , and you saw me sleeping and knew I was having this dream… wouldn’t you want me to stay here as long as possible? I know that I would, if I knew you were.

 

“So that helped, some. But now, when I get those thoughts, I don’t believe them anymore. You know why?” Sun looked at Brother and smiled a smile that the younger doll had only ever seen on him a scant handful of times. The expression was not bright and curious and silly as it usually was, but instead had dimmed into something soft and sad and weary. It was the smile that never failed to remind Brother that even though Sun may have seemed oblivious and naïve sometimes, he still saw and understood far more than he usually let on, and only Starlight and Kitten remembered more about their time with _her_ than he did. “Because I know that I couldn’t possibly imagine everything that we’ve experienced out here. I couldn’t imagine how _green_ the trees are. I couldn’t dream up the way tea and soda and apples taste, or the way the birds sound when they scream, or how soft _this_ is.”

 

He cuddled the little doll he held closer to his chest before letting out a little wry huff of a laugh. “And squiggles that _talk_ to you? Come on, that’s crazy. I would have never been able to come up with that by myself. Believe me, I wish I could.” His smile faded and his words faltered as his hand unconsciously rose to his throat and a haunted, faraway look came into his eyes. After a few moments, Sun shook his head and focused back on Brother.

 

“Besides, if we were making this all up, then why would bad things still happen? Like to Starlight, in the bad place beyond her edifice, or to Kitten’s poor hands, or…”

 

“Like... earlier?” Brother ventured when Sun didn’t elaborate further.

 

Sun managed to look pained and sheepish at the same time. “Yeah. Like earlier. I don’t know what it is, Brother; I _want_ to like red, I do. It’s a perfectly good color, and Moonbin’s red soda tasted _amazing_ , and so many beautiful things are red. But… every time I see it, I…”

 

“I get it,” Brother interrupted gently. “You don’t have to explain.”

 

Sun smiled in relief, and Brother understood why. Sun liked to talk, but he wasn’t always the best at words. “So then. Do you feel better now?”

 

“I…” Brother chewed his lip again, still trying to process everything Sun had told him. “I don’t know.”

 

“Alright, how about we try this instead?” Sun unceremoniously reached out, wrapped his arms around Brother’s torso, and pulled himself – and, by extension, Starlight – close to rest flush against his broad chest, the small stuffed doll squashed between them just like Brother was now squashed between Sun and Cedar. Sun tucked his head under Brother’s chin with a soft, content sigh. “Does this seem fake to you, Brother?”

 

Brother hesitantly draped his free arm around Sun and Starlight and then closed his eyes, focusing solely on the sensations around him. The warmth of Cedar at his back and Sun and Starlight at his front, the faint rhythm of their heartbeats perfectly in tandem with his own. The sheer softness of the sheets and blankets cocooning them all. The sound of their soft breaths in his ear. The way Sun’s hair tickled his chin and throat.

 

“No,” he whispered truthfully.

 

“Good.” Sun gave a satisfied, tired hum. “Hold onto that feeling, okay?”

 

“I’ll try,” Brother promised as Sun’s breathing evened out and the other doll fell asleep once again. Brother managed to stay awake a minute or two longer, before the warmth around him finally pulled him under into slumber as well.

 

The room was quiet once more. And for once, so was the dark, little voice in Brother’s head.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

**Notes:**

_**Moonbin and Sanha’s books -** Yup, that’s the Velveteen Rabbit and the Wizard of Oz. ;) I imagined that Brother got a Star Wars artbook, too, though it could technically be anything, I suppose. It surprisingly took me a long time to figure out what book Eunwoo should read the dolls, since I decided that it shouldn’t be too violent or have too many concepts they would be unfamiliar with, so that they could just enjoy it without being traumatized or too confused. “Ooo, he should read Watership Down, it has cute bunnies! …That die in various horrific and violent ways… You know what, nevermind, Wizard of Oz it is, then.”_

_**The dolls can’t read??? –** In a word, no. Why would the witch make toys that knew how to read if they were never supposed to be exposed to books? Technically, they know what books are, and that you use them to store information, but they assume that you need to be magic to decipher the information, since the only other time they’ve seen them have been in f(x)’s house._

_**Starlight’s sleeping habits -** Insomnia is a textbook symptom of PTSD. Probably the other dolls get it from time to time, too, but Starlight is the one who suffers from it the most, in my mind. He is the one that seems to fall asleep the last and get up the earliest in the other fics in the series, so naturally, I had to go make it sad._


	3. A New Light

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well. This got long.

The next morning, the soda boys got ready for work, as usual, but while the other four left at their typical time after bidding goodbye to the dolls, Jinjin and Moonbin stayed behind and told their guests to follow them.

 

“Where are we going?” Sun asked as Jinjin and Moonbin led them up two other flights of stairs, the second much narrower than the others in the building.

 

“The attic,” Jinjin replied. “Nobody lives there; it’s mostly used for storage, but we’ve turned part of it into a little personal getaway. For when some of us need more alone time, or when we have things that are a bit too big to fit in our room downstairs, like my drum kit, or Moonbin’s weight machine. I still have no idea how you convinced Yoojung to buy you that thing, by the way.”

 

“What can I say, I’m persuasive. Aaaand here we are,” Moonbin announced, opening the door at the top of the stairs. “Welcome to our cave.” He tugged on a chain hanging down from the ceiling that connected to a light fixture, switching it on, though there was still a considerable amount of sun streaming in from the first two of the four windows at the other side of the room. Sun immediately rushed to the nearest one to peer out.

 

“Wow!” he exclaimed. “We’re up really high!”

 

The other dolls followed at a more sedate pace, glancing around the room curiously. The ceiling was much lower than the ones on the lower levels. The back half or so was dark and dusty, the windows covered with blankets and full of boxes and objects covered with large sheets, including one that looked like the wardrobe down in the Moonbin and Jinjin’s room. The front half, by contrast, was much more inviting, with a long piece of vibrant cloth spread on the floor near a large, worn, plush chair that sat in one corner of the room piled high with cushions. A bookshelf had been placed next to it, creating a little nook between the corner and the nearest window that Sun stood at. A few pictures had been hung up on the other two walls, along with a large, brown board. The board had a number of papers pinned to it, each with a symbol printed on it, along with a small picture drawn in crayon, pencil, or marker. The first one had an apple, the second a bird, the third a cat, and so on. Six cushions rested on the hardwood floor a few feet away from the board, with some crayons and pencils and paper placed in front of them.

 

There were also a few other objects and items set up around the room that Brother couldn’t discern the usage of, but that was neither here nor there, because they had arrived at the window, and Sun was right; they were indeed up… rather high. The ground seemed incredibly far away, and the cloudy sky looked so much more blue from this height. Brother found it rather exciting, and so did the others, but Starlight, he noticed, also seemed a little nervous at how far away the ground looked. Kitten noticed this as well, and leaned against Starlight’s back, hooking his chin on his shoulder. Starlight still looked a little nervous, but brightened up considerably at the physical contact, reaching back to fondly pat Kitten on the cheek.

 

“Enjoying the view?” Moonbin asked from his place over by the board covered in papers, sounding amused.

 

“It’s very nice,” Starlight said with dignity, retreating from the window as quickly as he could manage without making it _look_ like he was hurrying. “But you can’t have brought us up here just to show it to us.”

 

“Right you are,” Jinjin replied. He gestured to the papers on the brown board. “We noticed how down you were last night about not being able how to read. So, we’re gonna teach you.”

 

The dolls were all silent for a few seconds, processing this. Finally, Brother spoke up, hardly daring to believe what he suspected Jinjin was saying. “You’re… you’re going to teach us how to understand book-talk? We can actually learn?”

 

“Most people have to learn how to read, Brother,” Moonbin said, smiling. “Just like most people have to learn how to learn how to walk or talk. We’re different because we’re constructs, so we were premade with that knowledge, but even if you weren’t, nothing says you couldn’t learn after the fact. I mean, you’re already learning new things all the time, aren’t you?”

 

“Yes,” Brother said slowly, feeling a wide, answering grin spread across his face. It was still a foreign feeling, smiling this much, but he liked it. He liked it a lot. “Yes, I suppose you’re right.”

 

“Well then.” Jinjin motioned to the six cushions on the floor. “Take a seat, and we’ll start with the basics.”

 

The dolls all eagerly sat on a cushion each, Brother ending up between Starlight on his left and Laughter on his right, while Moonbin and Jinjin told them all about “letters” and how the sounds they made formed individual words. (“And there are other writing systems, too, like the one the magicians at Sweet Girl or SHINee Emporium sometimes use, but we’ll stick to this one for now since this is the one that most people around here use.”) As Brother stared longer at all the various individual shapes pinned up on the wall, that niggling feeling at the back of his mind he got when he first started looking thought the books the day before became stronger and stronger, until finally, when Jinjin came to the eighth letter on the board with the picture of a hand drawn next to it-

 

“H,” he blurted before Jinjin had a chance to say what the shape was called. Everyone looked at him and stared. Brother felt his cheeks get hot at the sudden scrutiny.

 

“How did you _do_ that?” Sun demanded, looking awed.

 

“I… don’t know,” Brother admitted, and truly, he didn’t. “I just… it looked familiar, is all. The name just popped into my head.”

 

“Do you recognize any of the others?” Jinjin asked, intrigued. Brother studied the other letters very hard, doing his best to allow any hidden knowledge buried deep in his mind to bubble back to the surface. Finally, he raised a finger and pointed to the eleventh letter, which had a picture of a key beside it.

 

“That one,” he said slowly. “It’s… K. And that one-” A letter near the end, with an umbrella drawn beside it. “-is U. And then the second to last one is… Y. I don’t know any of the others.”

 

All his brothers looked _immensely_ impressed.

 

“He must have accidentally gotten some letters when _she_ gave him his words,” Starlight hypothesized, looking very proud. “She must have thought there was no reason for us to know how to read, so she didn’t give us that, but Brother got some anyway, because he’s just so clever like that.” He pinched Brother’s cheek fondly, and Brother reflexively batted him away, though his cheeks flushed again a little at the praise.

 

After the rest of the letters had been introduced, Moonbin retrieved a small stack of papers from the nearby bookshelf and handed one of them to Cedar. It had five letters printed on it in black marker, with a large tree drawn on one corner. “Know what that is, Cedar?”

 

Cedar shook his head mutely.

 

“That’s your name. That says ‘cedar.’”

 

“Really?” Cedar gazed at the paper with wide eyes.

 

“Yup. That’ll be your very first word to start practicing. Sun, this one’s yours.” Sun accepted his piece of paper with three black letters and a stylized sun drawn with bright yellows and oranges, smiling so widely that it almost looked like it might be a bit painful.

 

Starlight’s name had far more letters than the other two’s had, but he still looked absolutely delighted to receive his paper, fingers tracing the small, glowing stars printed on it.

 

“Laughter, this one is for you! Laughter is kind of invisible, though, so MJ just put the sound laughter makes instead of drawing a picture.” Brother peered at the paper curiously, seeing H and the first letter on the brown board repeated all over the paper.

 

Laughter, meanwhile blinked at the paper in confusion, turning it around and around in his hands before holding it up to his ear and focusing intently. “I don’t hear anything,” he said after a moment. He was holding the paper upside down and backwards.

 

“No, you have to look at the letters, with your eyes,” Jinjin explained patiently, turning the page back around and right side up so that Laughter could see it properly. “That’s how reading works.”

 

Laughter looked at the paper for another long moment, and Brother saw a brief look of acute disappointment flash across his face. Jinjin evidently saw it, too, eyes flicking between the paper and the crosses in Laughter’s eyes with a dawning look of realization that Brother had also just come to.

 

 “Laughter,” he began slowly. “Can you… not see the letters?”

 

“I can see!” Laughter replied, a bit too quickly and a touch defensively. “Some things. Just not…” He blinked again at the paper in front of him. “Stuff like this. But it’s okay,” he added, as if sensing the excited, jubilant mood in the room deflate. “You can show the others how to listen with their eyes so that they can know what the paper and the books say, and then they can tell me if I need to know anything. Right?”

 

“Of course we will!” Starlight assured him, reaching across Brother to pat Laughter’s arm. Cedar and Sun nodded vehemently while Brother instinctively reached out to squeeze his hand and Kitten laid his head on his shoulder. “We’ll work hard so you can know what all the books say, too.” A chorus of affirmatives echoed his sentiment, and Laughter smiled, his dimples back in full force. A wave of relief washed over Brother at the sight.

 

“I have a question!” Sun interjected, sticking his paper in the air and waving it about. “My name starts with a ‘sss’ sound, and so does Cedar’s and Starlight’s, but why does Cedar have a cat squiggle at the front of his word instead of a star squiggle?” He pointed to the third letter on the wall, which had a picture of a cat drawn next to it, and then the nineteenth letter, which had a star drawn next to it.

 

“Ah… it’s a long story,” Moonbin explained, rubbing the back of his neck ruefully. “Suffice it to say, there are some rules you have to know about how the letters work so you can read and write them properly. Some of them are really weird, too, now that I think about it. Don’t know why. But that can all come later. Right now, you can practice with the alphabet and your names, and we can work on more tomorrow, okay?”

 

The dolls readily agreed. They each grabbed paper and writing implements as the two other constructs left, and studiously began practicing the twenty-six letters Moonbin called the “alphabet” as well as the sequences of letters that spelled their names. Brother found he very much enjoyed the mentally stimulating work, and quickly got a handle on not only the alphabet and his own name as the hours wore on, but also the other dolls’ names.

 

Laugher, meanwhile, eventually got bored of sitting and doing nothing, and wandered away from the other dolls to leisurely meander around the large room, exploring. Heart followed him around, also having gotten bored with batting crayons and pencils and small shreds of paper across the floor. She pounced on little balls of dust and other loose objects, and sometimes climbed up Laughter’s clothing to perch on his shoulder for a better vantage point of the room before leaping off and galloping deeper into the attic.

 

Leaving them to their fun, the dolls returned to their writing, Sun and Starlight chatting animatedly between themselves while the other three were content to mostly listen. At some point, Heart came bounding back, crawling up Kitten’s sleeve and mewling at him stridently. It wasn’t uncommon for her to get vocal sometimes, so Brother mostly ignored her, focusing more on getting his latest S correct.

 

“Everyone, be quiet,” Kitten suddenly ordered sharply. It was so very unlike him to speak to them that way that immediately complete silence fell in the large room as the others gazed at him in surprise. Well… almost complete silence. Soft, sporadic giggling could be heard from near the back of the room. It was a hysterical, mirthless, ugly sound, one that they’d all hoped had been left far behind in _her_ dungeon.

 

“Cedar…” breathed Starlight, but Cedar was already scrambling to his feet and walking with long, purposeful strides to the other end of the attic. The rest of them all quickly got to their feet as well, Kitten hooking his arm around Brother’s and Sun and Starlight simultaneously reaching for each other’s hands.

 

Cedar quickly returned, holding a huddled, trembling, giggling form securely in his arms. Laughter’s fingers were fisted in his hair, pulling at the strands so tightly that it had to have been painful. The rest of his body was curled in on itself as far as it would go, every muscle fiber so taut that his entire body vibrated with tension. He’d-

 

“Gone away,” Sun whimpered, clutching Starlight’s hand tighter. “Why is he gone away? She’s not here, this shouldn’t happen anymore, why-?”

 

“Did you see anything, Cedar?” Starlight demanded, ignoring Sun for the time being.

 

Cedar shook his head. “No. But…”

 

“But?”

 

“It smelled kind of like… the tunnels. One ones beneath _her_ edifice. Back there, over by the tallest object.” Cedar jerked his head back toward the sheet-covered piece of furniture.

 

“Where we nearly lost him,” Kitten realized, and the dolls all looked at each other in dismay and understanding. Starlight, as usual, took charge of the situation.

 

“Over by the chair, Cedar,” he said, leading the taller doll in that direction, the others closely following. Cedar sat down on the rug next to the chair, Laughter held securely on his lap, while Sun and Starlight patiently pried his stiff fingers out of his hair, both murmuring quiet, soothing nothings to him the entire time. Brother meanwhile, grabbed him by his ankles, pulling as gently and steadily as he could to try to get him to uncoil and relax as much as possible. Laughter resisted him, naturally, but Brother had been expecting that, and simply exerted more strength until the other doll was forced to yield. Kitten stood by anxiously until the fingers of one hand had been loosened enough that he could wrap one of his bandaged hands around Laughter’s wrist and pull it away from his head, holding it firmly in both of his while Starlight and Sun worked the fingers of the other hand free. Sun took that one and let Laughter squeeze his hand as tightly as he wanted while Starlight began to run gentle, calming fingers through his tousled hair.

 

**_If you woke up, he wouldn’t have to suffer like this, you know._ **

 

Brother growled low in his throat and reflexively bit the inside of his cheek so hard he tasted blood, unwilling to let go of Laughter even for a second. He tried to focus instead on the warmth of Laughter’s skin against his, the rug under his knees, the sounds of Sun and Starlight’s voices, and concentrated as hard as he could on bringing their brother back to them.

 

Laughter had always been more prone to going away than the rest of the dolls. He tended to stay away the longest, too, oftentimes hours, on some occasions even entire nights. Brother supposed it was how he coped with being her favorite plaything. He hoped it wouldn’t be hours this time, though, and that the presence of them all around him would be enough to draw him out sooner.

 

Sure enough, as the soothing ministrations continued, Laughter’s tense, rigid body little by little, bit by bit, began to relax. His hysterical, manic giggling became quieter, more sporadic, until it finally faded out entirely, along with the tortured leer his face had twisted itself into. He lay limply in Cedar’s arms, staring vacantly at nothing. And then he blinked, slow and disoriented, like he was waking up from a dream.

 

“Laughter?” Starlight combed his fingers through his hair again. “Are you back with us?” 

 

“I… did I go somewhere?” Laughter replied, brow scrunching in confusion, voice hoarse and deeper than usual. “Why are you all touching me?”

 

“You went away, Laughter,” Sun explained. “You were exploring the back of the attic with Heart, and then you went away and were tugging at your hair and giggling, and it was really scary, and-” Kitten rolled his eyes and placed one bandaged hand over Sun’s mouth to stop the incessant stream of words.

 

“Did something happen back there?” Cedar asked, adjusting his grip slightly on Laughter’s body to help him sit up a little, head propped up against his shoulder. “When I went to get you, there was an odd smell. It smelled kind of like-”

 

“Like the tunnels,” Laughter finished, voice heavy. “Yes. I remember now. I smelled it, and… I don’t know, I guess I thought… that I was back _there_ again. Or worse, that I’d never left at all and _she’d_ taken me away while you all managed to escape, and I was… all alone…” Tears welled up in his sightless eyes and spilled silently down his cheeks. Brother stared at them, aghast, even while his heart broke slightly within him. All the dolls cried from time to time, of course, some more so than others, but Laughter… Laughter almost never cried. In fact, Brother could count on the fingers of one hand the amount of times he’d seen Laughter physically shed tears. It was like they were locked away deep inside him, just beyond his reach even when he was obviously sad or scared or suffering. So for _Laughter_ to be _crying_ about this…

 

“Oh, Laughter,” Starlight whispered, sounding as heartbroken as Brother felt. He carefully wiped away Laughter’s tears even as more took their place. “But you’re not alone. Me and Cedar, Sun and Kitten, Brother, we’re all here, and we would never, ever leave you behind.”

 

“That’s right!” Sun nodded vehemently as the other three tightened their grips on Laughter unconsciously.

 

“She’s just like her edifice now,” Starlight continued, brushing Laughter’s fringe back from his face. “She’ll never, ever be able to hurt you again. She’s gone, Laughter. She’s _gone_.”

 

“She’s…” Tears trickled faster down Laughter’s cheeks as his mouth trembled, like he couldn’t quite bring himself to say the word.

 

“She’s gone,” Cedar rumbled, sounding fiercely glad as he pressed Laughter’s head against his shoulder comfortingly.

 

“She’s gone,” Sun declared, clear and firm, squeezing Laughter’s hand tightly in both of his.

 

“She’s gone,” Kitten murmured thickly, voice only barely above a whisper, his eyes suspiciously bright.

 

It took Brother a moment to find his voice, but the moment he said those two words, it was like a great weight that he didn’t even realize had been there lifted off his shoulders: “She’s gone.”

 

As he heard them all vocalize the exact same words, over and over, Laughter’s face crumpled and he began to _sob_ , every tear that had been locked away inside him for so long seeming to pour out of him all at once. As Starlight wrapped his arms around his shoulders and rested his cheek atop his head, the rest of them pressed closer as well, until they were a close, tangled knot of warm bodies and the rest of the world briefly fell away. Finally, the steady flow of tears down Laughter’s cheeks began to subside, and he drew in a deep, shuddering breath.

 

“Okay,” he said, extracting one of his hands to wipe at his damp cheeks, smiling a tiny, reassuring smile at them all. “I think I’m alright now.”

 

Wiping his own eyes against his sleeve, Brother replied, interjecting as much saccharine innocence into his tone as he could, “You _sure_ , Laughter? Maybe a kiss would help? I’m sure Starlight-” Laughter kicked out with one foot and thumped Brother on the chest. “Never mind, he’s fine. You can put him down now, Cedar.”

 

Cedar chuckled at the exchange and obligingly set Laughter down on the rug, while Starlight glowered at the both of them and the rest of them spread out a little to give him some space. Before he withdrew as well, a mischievous look flashed across Starlight’s face. Too swiftly for Laughter to escape, he bent over and pressed a quick peck to his cheek. Laughter grimaced dramatically and cringed with his entire body while the rest of them laughed and Starlight looked incredibly pleased with himself. Heart, meanwhile, clambered up onto Laughter’s knee with a concerned mew, gnawing on his finger when he went to pet her.

 

“She was scared, I think,” Kitten said quietly. “She was the one to let us know that you’d gone.”

 

A number of emotions flitted across Laughter’s face in rapid succession upon hearing that bit of information, before finally seeming to settle on regret. He ducked his head, letting his fringe fall back into his eyes. “Sorry,” he murmured, and Brother got the feeling he was apologizing for more than just scaring Heart.

 

“Don’t apologize,” Starlight said sternly. “It wasn’t your fault. It’s not like you had any choice in the matter. We’re all just glad you’re alright. Don’t you agree, Heart?”

 

Heart meowed and nuzzled her little head against Laughter’s hand before jumping down from his knee and climbing up Kitten’s clothes to cuddle under his chin.

 

“Do you want to come sit with us, Laughter?” Cedar asked, putting a hand on the smaller doll’s shoulder.  “You can rest some more if you need to.”

 

“I didn’t finish exploring, though,” Laughter said, pouting slightly. “I’m not _hurt_ or anything. I don’t want to spend all my time sitting around while you all work. It makes me itchy, and I’d probably just get lost in my own head again. I want to be here doing something, too, even if I can’t do the book-speak thing.” Brother sympathized. Having to sit with nothing to do was absolutely mind-numbing. At least the other dolls had all had objects in their cells they could occupy their time with when _she_ wasn’t around; Laughter had had nothing except for the little bits and scraps they’d been able to toss him from time to time. No wonder he was so prone to getting absorbed in his own little world; it was the only entertainment he’d ever really had aside from conversation, and conversation could only take one so far. So when faced with the prospect of finally having something new to occupy him, of course he’d jump at the chance despite everything that’d just happened.

                                                           

“Be that as it may, what if you find that smell again and go away a second time?” Starlight was asking worriedly. “Do you really want to risk that?”

 

“How about we move some of the boxes to make a barrier?” Brother suggested. “That way, if Laughter bumps into one of them, he can just turn around and knows not to go further into the room. He can still explore, but he won’t run into the smell again.”

 

“Good idea, Brother!” Sun said approvingly. “We can talk with Jinjin and the others when they get back, too; maybe they know a way to get rid of the smell.”

 

Everyone looked to Starlight to see how he would respond. He thought about it for a moment, then nodded. “That’s acceptable. Are you alright with that idea, Laughter?”

 

Laughter shrugged. “As long as I still get to walk around, I’m good.”

 

That settled, the other five dolls quickly arranged some boxes so that they formed a loose barricade across the front half of the attic, and then returned to their writing practice. Laughter continued to sit on the rug for a little while longer, before picking himself up a bit stiffly (small wonder, with how tense his muscles had been) and resuming his traversal of the room. Just a few minutes into his exploration, he almost tripped over an oblong, bright yellow object with wires strung down one side set on a stand near one of the windows. Curiously, he plucked one of the wires, and all the dolls immediately looked up and swiveled their heads around at the sweet sound that rang out across the room. Fascinated, Laughter plucked the string a few more times, and then sat himself down next to the object and began twanging and strumming the strings in earnest, eyes closed, expression rapt.

 

Brother found himself smiling at the heartwarming sight, his expression mirrored by the rest of his siblings, and then went back to his practicing, the pleasant sounds from the object a nice accompaniment to the scratch of crayon against paper. As he began to trace out his name again, he noticed that Kitten was using a different hand than the rest of them to write with, the bandaged fingers of his left hand wrapped entirely around the long, slim body of a dark blue pencil as he shakily traced out the second letter of his name.

 

He nudged Kitten’s knee. “Why are you using that hand? The rest of us use this one.” He gestured with the crayon held in his right hand.

 

Kitten considered the question for a moment, then shrugged. “Feels better this way,” he replied simply. Intrigued, Brother tried switching hands to write with… only for his crayon to haphazardly careen all over the paper no matter how hard he tried to make it do what he wanted it to. Frustrated, he switched back after his paper was covered in shapeless green scribbles, smacking a chuckling Kitten on the shoulder as he did so.

 

“Found Sanha’s guitar, I see,” came an unexpected voice from the direction of the door. Brother started violently, and all the dolls turned as one to see a smiling Rocky standing in the doorway. Laughter immediately yanked his hand away from the object he’d been playing with and shuffled back a pace, looking guilty. “Hey, no, don’t worry about it, it’s fine. Would you like to learn how to actually play?”

 

Laugher’s head snapped up and he looked in Rocky’s direction intently. “Play?”

 

“Yeah. You strum and press the strings in certain ways to get certain sounds, which makes music.”

 

“Is that what the pretty sound was called?” Sun interjected. “Music?”

 

“Yeah, that’s right. Sanha’s been dying for someone to play with that isn’t Jinyoung, since he’s so busy all the time over at Sweet Girl, you know? But the rest of us don’t really have the knack for it, I’m afraid. He’d be more than willing to teach you, Laughter. If you want.”

 

 “…Really?” Laughter finally asked, cautious but heartbreakingly hopeful at the same time.

 

“Sure,” Rocky replied, his easy, friendly grin never faltering.

 

The smile that slowly spread across Laughter’s face like the sun peeking out from behind a cloud was wide enough to turn his eyes into happy crescents. “Thank you.”

 

“No problem.”

 

And with that, Brother felt any lingering traces of distrust he might have still held toward their hosts evaporate like water on a hot iron. Anyone who could elicit _that_ particular smile from Laughter was alright in his opinion.

 

“But anyway,” Rocky continued, turning his attention to the rest of them. “I actually came up to ask you all if you wanted to help me with something.”

 

“What is it?” Starlight asked interestedly, tucking his legs under him and leaning forward slightly.

 

Rocky explained, “Well, one of my bike tires sprung a leak earlier this afternoon, and it’s going to take some time to fix. But in the meantime, I still have some soda deliveries to make around town. It’s going to take me a long time if I do it by myself, and the rest of the guys have to watch the store. So! I thought, hey, you guys are all big and strong; you could help me make my deliveries, and in return, I could show you around a little. If you’re going to be staying here for awhile, you might as well know the lay of the land. What do you say?”

 

“I certainly wouldn’t mind,” Starlight replied. “You and your brothers have done so much for us. I’d be happy to do something that would help you all, too. But what do the rest of you think?”

 

“We would get to go out?” Sun looked both very intrigued and a bit wary at the same time.

 

“With _people_?” Cedar looked _decidedly_ wary.

 

“I mean, if you don’t want to, don’t feel pressured,” Rocky hastened to assure them. “I know you’re busy with your letters right now, I just thought you might be interested is all.”

 

The thought of being around so many potentially dangerous strangers made Brother’s skin crawl, and he was sure the others felt the same way. Well… okay, maybe not Starlight or Sun, judging from how enthusiastic the two seemed to be at Rocky’s words. Still… the more Brother thought about it, the more the notion of finding out more about this new place that would be their home for the time being appealed to him. There was still so much he didn’t know about the world; how was he going to learn anything if they stayed cooped up all the time? And Starlight was right; their hosts had helped them all a lot, given them new clothes, a place to stay. It just felt right to do something for them in return.

 

 “Rocky,” Starlight spoke up again suddenly as Brother pondered these things. “Are there kids that live here, by any chance?”

 

“Huh? Uh… yeah, some. New merchants and families move in all the time here. In fact, there are so many now that they opened up a school a couple years ago for them all, so they don’t all have to go back through their own Doors to get an education. It’s the first day of school today, actually, so a lot of kids won’t be out and about, but there should still be some babies and toddlers around.”

 

Kitten’s eyes went wide at that, and he immediately sat up ramrod straight on his cushion. He seemed to wrestle with himself for a moment before curling into Brother’s side and murmuring, “I… wouldn’t mind going, I guess?”

 

 “I’m in, too,” Brother spoke up, patting Kitten on the head briskly and earning himself a halfhearted swat in response.

 

“Well, in that case,” Laughter sighed dramatically. “Might as well not be left out.”

 

“Are you sure, Laughter?” Starlight said, concerned. “We don’t _have_ to go out today, it can wait. Like Rocky said, you shouldn’t feel pressured.”

 

“And I could stay with you if the others want to go on ahead,” Cedar was quick to add.

 

Laughter shook his head stubbornly. “No, I’m coming. We’re going to have to leave here at some point. Might as well be sooner rather than later.” Brother rather doubted this was Laughter’s only reason for insisting that they all go, but he kept that to himself.

 

With that decided, the dolls left their work to finish another time, and filed down the stairs behind Rocky. Upon reaching the D.Store, the five dolls with functioning eyes were each given a crate of soda to carry while Rocky took the last one. When Laughter looked a little glum at not being able to help, Rocky unbuckled a pouch around his waist that made interesting jangling noises every time it moved and handed it off to the taller construct, with strict instructions to keep it safe for him. With everyone finally situated, Rocky led them out into the bustling settlement called the Sash.

 

Brother almost immediately found himself nearly overwhelmed with all the stimuli around him, if also oddly energized. So many people and colors and sounds and smells and things! By the looks on his brothers’ faces as they took everything in, they were in a similar predicament, some handling everything better than others.

 

Kitten seemed especially discomfited with all the strange people everywhere, and kept trying to fold his long, lanky body behind Starlight’s smaller, slighter one and hide his face in his shoulder whenever the group made a stop for longer than five seconds. However, when the dolls were waiting outside a tiny store that was too small to fit all seven of them inside for Rocky to come back out, Starlight made a sudden, strangled sound of pure delight, grabbed Kitten’s arm, and pointed across the street at a tiny human, even smaller than the kids in the green wood. Kitten promptly forgot every single qualm he might have possibly had about venturing out of the building and immediately joined Starlight in cooing delightedly over the little thing from a distance as it dozed on the shoulder of a woman that was presumably its mother. When it groggily lifted its head to smile toothlessly at the two beaming dolls and give them a shy little wave, Starlight nearly burst into tears right there on the spot with Kitten faring only slightly better, though they rallied admirably and waved enthusiastically back. Brother simply rolled his eyes fondly at the pair of them, still unable to fathom just why they seemed so taken by baby humans, but happy that they were happy all the same.

 

Sun, meanwhile, was in his element. After around ten minutes, any wariness he may have initially had melted away completely. He darted here, there, and everywhere trying to see as much as he feasibly could, much to the chagrin of the others, particularly Brother, who literally had his hands full trying to stick to Sun’s side like glue and not drop his crate of soda at the same time. Once Sun noticed his name on a store sign, however, he talked of almost nothing else, inordinately proud of himself for recognizing it and beaming like his namesake the entire time.

 

“What’s that the people keep giving you?” Brother asked Rocky when they all exited the latest store after dropping off the last crate of soda. He’d been reduced to wrapping both arms around Sun’s middle and holding him a little ways off the ground to keep him from disappearing behind one of the many tall shelves in the store and potentially getting himself lost. Sun squirmed and pouted, but since he had a better view of his surroundings from this new height, he wasn’t protesting overly much.

 

“This? Oh, it’s money,” Rocky replied, showing them the sparkling gold and silver disks he held in his hands before depositing them in the pouch Laughter dutifully held out for him. “It’s what people give Yoojung in exchange for her soda. And she can use it to buy things she wants or needs for the D.Store. She gives us an allowance, too, in return for our work. Actually…” Rocky tapped his chin thoughtfully, glancing from doll to doll.

 

“Tell you what. How about before we go back to the apartment, I take you by the street food vendors and get you some bao buns and lemonade? You’ve helped me finish deliveries in a fraction of the time it would normally take, so I think you deserve a treat.” All the dolls perked up at once at the prospect of getting to taste something new. Starlight, though, also looked… slightly disappointed as well, for some reason. Sun evidently noticed, too.

 

“What’s wrong, Starlight?” he asked in concern as Brother set him back down on the street, still keeping a firm hold of one of his elbows so he didn’t wander off.

 

“Oh!” Starlight flushed, fidgeting in place at the sudden attention. “Oh, it’s nothing, really. I’m looking forward to the food!”

 

“But…?” Brother prompted.

 

“Well… that little place over there.” Starlight pointed across to a small store on the opposite street corner, which seemed to be offering glass containers filled with a colorful, hard substance. Some had flowers or other objects embedded in the colorful substance, some floated in bowls of water, some didn’t have glass containers and simply stood on their own. A mixture of intriguing smells wafted out of the open door, noticeable even from across the street. “I kind of… wanted to look inside really quick. If… if that was okay, that is?”

 

“Oh, it would be perfectly fine, but… we should probably get a move on if we want to get to the vendors before all their food is sold out,” Rocky told him regretfully. “Unless you want to stay and catch up with us at the apartment?”

 

Instead of refusing, like Brother initially expected he would, Starlight actually looked thoughtful at the proposition. Before he could open his mouth to reply, however, Brother interjected with, “You can’t stay here by yourself, though, Starlight!” The others all nodded firmly.

 

“Why, Brother,” Starlight replied, latching onto Brother’s other arm in his clinging way with a mischievous grin. “Are you volunteering to keep me company?”

 

“Um…” Brother found himself briefly at a loss. He looked to the others for help. “I don’t know. Am I? Is it even safe?”

 

Everyone glanced at Laughter, who squinted at the shop dubiously before nodding. “There’s magic there alright. But it’s not bad. It… _feels_ safe, at least.”

 

“Do you even know how to get back to the apartment, though?” Cedar asked dubiously. “What if you get lost?”

 

“Past the park, two blocks down, one block over,” Brother said automatically, pointing with Sun’s elbow. He then realized what he’d done and mentally kicked himself.

 

“Right in one,” Rocky chimed in helpfully, sounding impressed.

 

“Does that mean I can go?” Starlight asked hopefully. “I mean, I don’t have to, I guess we can always come back, especially if everyone would rather go get food, and-”

 

“Stop talking and let’s go,” Brother sighed, passing off Sun’s elbow to Kitten. “Don’t eat everything before we get back, got it?”

 

“We make no promises,” Laughter grinned while Kitten blinked at him innocently.

 

“Thank you, Brother!” Starlight beamed, bouncing up and down happily while doing his level best to strangle Brother’s arm as he dragged him across the street towards the shop.

 

“You two have fun,” Rocky called after them amusedly as he and the other dolls began walking down the street in the other direction.

 

Once Starlight and Brother reached the shop, Starlight seemed to grow more cautious, slowing down and pressing closer to Brother’s side as they entered. The small, open room was warm and inviting, wooden shelves stocked with rows upon rows of jars and containers and pillars of the colored substance. Some were placed here and there, a bright, flickering flame burning in their centers. Starlight made an interested noise and moved to investigate one, tugging Brother behind him. Crouching down, he stared at the flame dancing to and fro in the jar as if mesmerized, still clinging tight to Brother’s hand.

 

“I think… I think they’re meant to smell nice,” he postulated after a moment, sniffing the air experimentally. “And give light, of course. But the smell seems to be a big part of it.”

 

“Right you are, young man,” came a raspy voice from the rear of the room, making both dolls jump slightly and Starlight scramble back to his feet. A woman with a round, wrinkled face and pale silver hair slowly stood up from behind a counter, using a polished stick to support herself. Though she moved slowly and stiffly, her dark eyes were bright and intelligent as she looked them over, smile wide and genuine. “But candles do much more than that, especially with a little dash of magic added into the mix.”

 

“They’re beautiful,” Starlight told her sincerely, smiling back just as widely. “The colors are all so pretty. And everything smells so different! Is it the magic that makes them smell like that? I didn’t know magic could smell this good.”

 

“Oh no, dear boy,” the woman chuckled. “That’s all the work of my fragrances.  No, the magic simply helps with the feeling the candle is meant to convey.”

 

She plucked a dark blue jar off the shelf, pointing at the label that neither doll could read. “This one, for instance, if you were to smell it, would simply smell like musk and lavender with a hint of citrus. But when you light it, I guarantee that you’ll be asleep within five minutes. Any of the candles on this shelf will have similar effects.”

 

She put the jar back and picked up another on the shelf below it, this one a creamy orange swirled with white. “And this one, when it’s lighted, will remind you of good things, good memories, lift your mood. This is what makes Auntie Cha’s candles special, you see.” She winked at them both, replacing the orange jar as well.

 

“That’s amazing!” Starlight exclaimed. “Isn’t that amazing, Brother?” Brother nodded, dutifully impressed. “Could you show us more? Please?”

 

“With pleasure, young man.” The woman, presumably Auntie Cha, began to lead them around the small shop. Starlight was in his element, chattering away with her like he’d known her for years, asking all sorts of questions about the candles and how they were made and what smells they all were, eyes alight with a certain type of curiosity that Brother had never seen in them before. Brother occasionally chimed in with a question or two of his own, but for the most part, he hung back and let Starlight do most of the talking. Seeing him so happy sent a pang of something bittersweet through Brother’s heart.

 

**_This can’t be real. It can’t. Smallest could never look so happy over a bunch of stupid jars and smells._ **

 

 _Shut up, you_. Brother absently gnawed on one knuckle before pulling down a random jar off a shelf and sticking his nose in it to distract himself. After seeing if he could recognize the letters on its label, he replaced it and took down another, and another, and then another. Some smelled familiar (“Starlight, look, look, this one smells like Cedar’s trees!”), while some smelled like nothing he’d ever encountered before (he surreptitiously shoved one deep magenta candle behind a few blue ones after nearly gagging on its overpowering floral scent), until finally, he pulled a plain, ruddy brown candle off a shelf that had no jar or container. Once he pulled it up to his nose, the scent immediately made him freeze, eyes wide. It smelled like… apples… mixed with cinnamon? Sweet and fresh and hearty and warm, all mixed together, and it immediately brought to mind the feeling of hot water rushing over his skin, friendly words, the sensation of having a stomach full of good food for the first time ever. It smelled like… hope? Yes, that was it. Hope.

 

Brother blinked back some sudden, suspicious moisture from his eyes and hurriedly replaced the candle as Starlight tugged him insistently toward the counter where the woman was standing, offering him a piece of paper with writing on it.

 

“-I also have candle making classes available every Saturday, if you’re interested. Just normal, regular candles, no magic involved,” she was saying.

 

“You mean I can actually learn how to make these myself?” Starlight looked absolutely _thrilled_ at this prospect. “That would be amazing, I’d love that! But…” His expression fell slightly. “We… don’t have any money. Don’t you need that for things like this?”

 

The woman laughed gently and tapped the top of the paper with a pen. “The first lesson is free, dear. You just have to sign your name on one of these lines here.”

 

Starlight perked up again immediately. “Oh! We can do that. We just learned how to write our names today, actually.” He paused, face contorting in confusion. “…What’s ‘Saturday’?”

 

“Four days from now.”

 

“Okay! I won’t forget!” Starlight turned to Brother, grinning. “Do you want to try it too, Brother?”

 

Brother hesitated for a moment before thinking back to the reddish brown candle, and… he supposed he could sort of understand why they intrigued Starlight so much. Besides, the others would worry if he let Starlight go somewhere so far from the apartment by himself. “Sure, why not?”

 

After the two dolls carefully signed their names on the paper, Auntie Cha folded it up and tucked it into a pocket in her dress. “Now, since everyone who signs up for my classes gets a complementary candle…” She shuffled over to a shelf near the front of the store, picking over the row of glass jars filled with colors, flowers, shells, and other objects before selecting one filled with clear, bubbly wax in swirled shades of purple, red, and orange, with tiny, pale flowers mixed into the colors. “I call this one Honeysuckle Sunset.” She handed it out to Starlight, who took it eagerly. He sniffed it curiously, then froze, eyes growing wide, flicking down to the candle and then to the woman in astonishment.

 

“How… how did you…?”

 

“It’s a talent.” The old woman tapped the side of her nose, smile soft. 

 

Starlight carefully hugged the little jar to his chest, and had to swallow a few times before he could say, “Thank you.”

 

“Thank _you_ , for making an old woman happy, dear.” She patted him on the arm with one leathery hand. “It’s not often I find someone so interested in my craft. You remind me of someone. Someone from… a long, long time ago. It’s always nice to be reminded of good things. As for you.” She turned to Brother, studying him critically for a long moment before hobbling over to a shelf and picking up the candle that had smelled of apples and cinnamon and reassurance. “For you, young man. My Cinnamon Cider seemed to resonate with you.”

 

It took Brother more than a few seconds to find his tongue. “…Thank you.”

 

“You’re quite welcome, dear.” Auntie Cha took a seat behind the counter again. “I’ll see you boys on Saturday, then. 10 AM sharp. Feel free to bring some friends with you, if you like. The more the merrier, I always say.”

 

After bidding farewell to her, the dolls left the shop, standing out on the bustling sidewalk. Once they moved to a place that wasn’t so busy, Starlight immediately turned to Brother, eyes aglow. “Can I smell your candle, Brother? Please?” Brother handed it over without fuss.

 

Starlight closed his eyes and took a deep sniff. “Ah. The witches’ house.  I can see why you liked it so much.” He passed it back to Brother. “Want to smell mine? It smells like… the place the door out of _her_ edifice led to. The one with all the vines with the little yellow-white flowers climbing everywhere.”

 

Brother hummed interestedly and took the glass jar from Starlight, sticking his nose into it. Immediately, he was hit with a wave of light, fresh sweetness, of giddy elation and endless possibilities and the feeling of stepping out of darkness into light. “You’re right. It smells… like freedom. That’s what it smells like.”

 

“Yes!” Starlight said, beaming as Brother handed it back to him. “Yes, that’s it exactly! Isn’t this so amazing, Brother? It’s like the opposite of what happened to Laughter earlier. Smells can take us back to our good times, too. And if we keep remembering our good times, then we won’t have as much time to remember all the bad things!”

 

Brother wanted desperately to believe that Starlight was right, but the dark little voice in his head doubted it was that simple. Regardless, Brother held his tongue, unwilling to spoil Starlight’s good mood as the two dolls made their way down the street, almost level with the large, open, green area bordered with trees that Rocky had called a “park.” As they passed the last building, a loud, piercing shriek rang out from the space between the building and the trees, making both dolls start violently. Brother instinctively moved to stand in front of Starlight while Starlight did the same, causing them to bump into each other instead.

 

“Come on, Starlight, let’s _go_ ,” Brother said when nothing else happened immediately. He grabbed Starlight by the wrist and tugged him along, not wanting to stick around and meet whatever made that sound. It brought back memories that he didn’t want to contemplate.

 

“No, Brother, wait-!” Starlight grunted, digging in his heels and forcing Brother to come to a halt. “Look.” He pointed to a number of red smears on a black bag and more on the ground, trailing to a space between a pile of stacked wooden structures and a stack of boxes.

 

“Something’s hurt,” Starlight observed, concern creasing his brow. He began to step down the concrete walkway before Brother caught his arm.

 

“It could be dangerous,” Brother protested, recalling what happened the _last_ time Starlight got up close and personal with something that seemed harmless but wasn’t.

 

“Or it could be something that needs our help,” Starlight retorted, handing off his candle to Brother and venturing further into the alleyway. Brother glowered at his retreating back, but dutifully followed anyway.

 

Whatever creature or thing Brother expected to see between the boxes and stacked wood, though… it certainly wasn’t _this_. A tiny, miniature person - smaller even then the children and babies the dolls had come across thus far - huddled against the wall, dirty, bruised, and bleeding profusely from its leg. It gazed up at them in obvious fear, all the color drained from its pale face.

 

“P-please, don’t hurt me,” it begged tremulously in a male’s voice, which was startlingly deep for something so small.

 

“We don’t want to hurt you,” Starlight said gently, immediately kneeling down on the dirty concrete to be closer to eye level with the little thing while Brother tried very hard to shake off the sudden, peculiar, overwhelming wave of deja-vu that had just overtaken him.

 

“R-really?”

 

“Of course.” Starlight cocked his head to one side quizzically. “Why would we?”

 

The injured creature considered this for a moment. “I suppose you have a point.”

 

“Where did you come from?” Brother blurted, unable to contain his curiosity any longer. “I didn’t know humans came in such small sizes.” He blinked and then squinted down at the thing skeptically. “Are you a munchkin?”

 

“Hey! First of all, I’m not small!” the tiny person retorted indignantly. “I’m four-point-nine inches tall _exactly_ , thank you very much. You both are just… big, is all.”

 

“Of course, my mistake,” Brother replied, valiantly suppressing the amused grin that kept making the corners of his mouth twitch as Starlight hid a smile in his hand.

 

“And anyways,” the little creature continued, mollified. “I’m not human _or_ a munchkin, I’m a brownie. Well, more or less, anyway. Real brownies have magic, like Minjeong, Mint, Dohee, and Myungji do. Me and my brothers weren’t created to have magic, but that’s alright, we don’t need it to help Birdie.” His eyes abruptly filled with tears. “But I… I don’t know where I came from now, or where everyone else is.” He gazed up at them mournfully, lower lip wobbling suspiciously, looking so disoriented and scared that Brother felt his heart clench in sympathy. “I’m lost.”

 

“Well, then, in that case, how about you come with us?” Starlight suggested practically. “You certainly can’t walk with your leg the way it is right now. Our place isn’t far; we can get you cleaned up, and then go about finding your home. What do you say?” Starlight reached his arm between the stack of wooden slats and the boxes and offered his hand, palm up, to the little creature invitingly, smiling his softest smile. Brother did his best to mimic the expression, though he didn’t think he managed it quite as well.

 

The brownie hesitated, little eyes flicking between both dolls rapidly, before he took a deep breath, set his jaw, and reached out to take hold of Starlight’s finger. His hand was so small that his palm didn’t even completely cover Starlight’s fingertip. With a little maneuvering, Starlight soon had the tiny person seated securely in one hand, the other carefully curled around him to make sure he didn’t accidentally topple off. He clung to Starlight’s thumb tightly as Starlight lifted him up, whimpering as the ground dropped away below him.

 

“Are you alright?” Starlight asked, comfortingly petting his mussed mop of blond hair with two fingers as he rose to his feet.

 

“Yeah, yeah, I just… wow, head rush,” the brownie replied, voice strained. “I’ll be okay, just… give me a second…”

 

The dolls obligingly waited for him to catch his breath, Brother taking the opportunity to get a better look at the little creature. He wore a dirty, miniature green sweater with pink lettering on the front that Brother couldn’t yet read, though he did manage to recognize the letters, G, O, L, and F. The fabric of his black pants was torn and shredded all down one leg, soaked with blood from three large, deep gashes. Crimson leaked steadily from each and dripped off the toe of his shoe, which should have been the same bright green as the other, but was now saturated with red. Such injuries would have been barely worth acknowledging on one of the dolls, but on such a tiny scale, they looked quite serious, not to mention painful.

 

“Alright, I’m okay now, I think,” the little person finally said, glancing up at them and smiling wanly. His face was still horribly pale but he did look a little more settled. “Just…” He craned his head up to look at Starlight, “Try not to drop me, okay?”

 

“Never,” Starlight promised seriously, pressing his hands even closer to his chest, unable to resist stroking a fingertip over his passenger’s fluffy blond hair again. “You’re safe with us, I promise.”

 

The brownie didn’t seem to mind the contact, even leaning into it a little as he visibly relaxed, hugging Starlight’s thumb tighter. “Thank you,” he said, the words coming out a little choked.

 

“You’re welcome,” Starlight smiled, preparing to walk back onto the bustling street, Brother right on his heels. “I’m Starlight, by the way. This is Brother. Do you have a name?”

 

 “I’m Jackson.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 **Notes** :

_**English vs. Korean alphabets** – Given the fact that all the signs on all the MVs referenced for the location are in English instead of Korean, I personally headcanon that the “official” language of the Sash is English, and it’s the one most of the store owners use, just for convenience’s sake. So, that’s the alphabet the dolls are learning. Even if everyone doesn’t speak the same language, there are probably translation spells and charms that everyone can use so that everyone can understand each other, like Star Trek’s universal translator._

_**Kitten is left handed?** – Eyup. Leo was born left handed and then was forced to learn to write with his right hand as a child, so nowadays, if you see him writing, it’s usually with his right hand. His doll counterpart obviously doesn’t have that particular baggage, however, so he simply uses his original dominant hand to write with like nature intended. Fun fact, if Laughter could write, Brother would be making the same observation about him that he did with Kitten, because Hongbin is also left handed._

_**Guitar lessons –** Both Hongbin and Sanha play the guitar irl. I saw the opportunity and I took it.  
_

_**Candles!** – Auntie Cha’s candle shop initially started out as a reference to N’s real life hobby (because Starlight deserves all the good things), and then kind of grew in significance over the course of me plotting out this chapter._


	4. Who's That

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An update at long last! \o/ Thanks for waiting so patiently, everyone.

Jackson observed the gargantuan surroundings around him with equal amounts of curiosity and trepidation. The world Outside was just so _huge_. He’d seen glimpses from Birdie’s windows, of course, but never up close like this. He wasn’t quite sure he liked it, but at the same time, it was all too interesting for him to just hide his face in his huge rescuer’s shirt and not come out until they reached… wherever it was they were going.  
  
And speaking of his huge rescuers… Jackson glanced up for the 20 th time at the two Big People who had found him as he explained how he had got into the predicament he’d found himself in, still unable to quite wrap his mind around how _gigantic_ they were. Birdie was already a giant compared to him, but these men dwarfed even her papa. It was a little intimidating, if he was being perfectly honest with himself. Still, it was always fun to meet new people, and anything to keep his mind off the throbbing agony pulsing through his body with every beat of his heart was a good thing, in his opinion.

 

“-and so we decided to go close Birdie’s window, because it looked like it might rain, and if it rained, then her bed would get wet, and she’d have to change her sheets when she got home, which would just make _more_ work for her, but then this stupid crow tried to steal her beads, and when I tried to shoo it away it took me with it, and then it did this-” He kicked out with his injured leg and _immediately_ regretted it, “OW, ow ow ow ow ow, that smarts, _ow_ , God, why did I do that, ow. Anyways, I fell down into that trashbag where you guys found me, and that’s about it.”

 

Jackson paused for breath, more than slightly winded, he heard the one called Brother mutter, “I think we finally found someone who can make more noise than _Sun_. I didn’t think that was even possible.”

 

“Who’s Sun?” Jackson inquired immediately, pouncing upon that bit of information with interest.

 

“Our brother,” Starlight explained, sounding amused.

 

“Wait, there are _more_ of you?” Jackson exclaimed, eyes wide. “How many more? Are they all as big as you two?”

 

Brother snorted. “All between my and Starlight’s heights, actually. And there are four more.”

 

“Gosh…” Jackson breathed, almost unable to imagine it.

 

“Jackson, I have a question, if you don’t mind,” Starlight asked conversationally while Jackson was still processing this.

 

“Shoot,” he replied, grateful for the distraction.

 

“Earlier… you said you were made? Not born, but made? From magic?” As Starlight talked, Brother opened a door to a large, brick building, and went inside, Starlight right on his heels. Jackson didn’t even have time to properly get a glimpse of the bottom floor before Brother and Starlight began to climb a long flight of stairs.

 

“Yup! For Birdie. Were you made, too?” He glanced over to Brother and cocked his head to one side. “What are you, then?”

 

“We’re dolls.”

 

“Oh.” Jackson blinked, and then squinted up at Starlight in confusion. “You’re… very _big_ dolls…”

 

“Really?” Brother sounded oddly surprised. “I mean, we know dolls can be smaller, sure, but…”

 

“Goodness yes. I’ve never heard of dolls that are as big as you. Most dolls are around my size, maybe a little bigger. How would you even play with dolls your size, anyway?”

 

Brother made a peculiar sort of expression at that, sort of blank and sort of angry and a little bit scared, all at the same time. Instead of replying, he lifted one hand to his mouth and began to absently gnaw at his first knuckle. Jackson stared, bewildered at this response, but then Starlight was opening the door to a new room, and Jackson promptly forgot everything else.

 

Because this room was _huge_. The other end actually appeared a little hazy to Jackson’s eyes, so far away it was. Long, gigantic windows with sheer, billowy curtains lined each wall, with three humongous beds pressed together along each adjacent one and what looked like a desk standing against the far wall. Starlight briskly strode to the desk and gently set Jackson down on its surface. Jackson did his best to stay quiet as he was moved, but didn’t quite manage it. His leg just hurt so _badly_.

 

“I’m sorry, Jackson, are you okay?” Starlight asked worriedly, crouching down to be at eye level with him. Jackson tried to put on a brave face and nodded, smiling tightly.

 

“Yeah, I’m okay. Just… really hurts is all.”

 

“Well, let me see if I can do something about that.” Starlight stood resolutely, turning to Brother, who was still gnawing absently on his finger. “Keep an eye on him. I’ll be right back with the first aid kit.”

 

Brother nodded.  Starlight frowned slightly, pulling Brother’s hand away from his mouth with a stern yet loving glare, and disappeared around the corner to the left. Brother and Jackson watched him go, and then glanced at each other.

 

“He’s older than you, isn’t he,” Jackson observed with a strained grin.

 

Brother blinked. “How could you tell?”

 

“I know that look.” Jackson pulled his uninjured left leg up and hugged it to his chest, glancing around at the rest of the huge room curiously. “Jinyoung, one of my older brothers, does it to us a lot, especially when we do something stupid. Speaking of, where are the rest of your brothers?”

 

“Well, they said they were going to get some food,” Brother replied, setting the jars he’d been carrying on the desk. “Don’t know when they’ll be back, but it shouldn’t be too long.”

 

“Ah. So is this where you all live?”

 

“For now. It’s not our place, some people are letting us stay here. They’re like us. Made from magic, I mean.”

 

“Oh really? What do they do?”

 

“They work in a place that sells soda.”

 

“The D.Store?” Jackson asked, surprised.

 

Brother looked just as surprised. “Yeah. You know it?”

 

“Know _of_ it,” Jackson shrugged. “Birdie’s told us about it, but-”

 

The door at the other end of the room opened again, and four more Big People entered, chattering amongst themselves.

 

“Brother!” one of them called out loudly and joyously, breaking away from the one holding his elbow (was that a _cat_ on his shoulder?) and running across the room to throw his arms around Brother’s neck. “You’re back! I missed you!”

 

“I was only gone for a little while, Sun,” Brother muttered, though his eyes were soft and his big hands were gentle as he patted the slightly shorter person’s back. Jackson’s eyes widened in interest. So _this_ was Sun.

 

“It still felt weird not having you and Starlight around,” one of the others said in a much deeper voice. Jackson caught sight of black-inked pictures on the back of his hands. He led one of the other dolls with a weird black X in his eye where a pupil should be by the hand into the room while holding a hefty brown paper bag in the other. “He’s here, too, right?”

 

“Yes, I’m here!” came Starlight’s cheerful voice from around the corner. “Welcome back everyone!”

 

The giant doll with the tattooed hands seemed about to reply, before he caught sight of Jackson sitting atop the desk out of his periphery.  Jackson hesitantly gave him a little wave. To his confusion, the doll immediately let out a piercing, girly shriek.

 

“A bug!” he cried, dropping the bag he held to scramble atop the nearest bed. “There’s a bug on the desk!” Before Jackson even had time to be offended at that, Sun leapt into action, snatching up a nearby book.

 

“I’ll save you, Cedar!” He raised the book over his head, clearly preparing to squash Jackson with it. The brownie instinctively let out a tiny squeak of terror and curled up into a little, quivering ball, waiting for the pain that would surely come… before he felt large, rough hands close around him, scooping him up and shielding him against a solid, warm chest. Two voices rang out simultaneously.

 

“Guys, no! He’s not a bug, don’t hurt him!”

 

“ _What_ in the world is going on here?”

 

Heart still hammering like it was physically trying to escape his ribcage, Jackson uncurled a little and peeked over Brother’s huge fingers, which were curled protectively around him. Starlight had returned, holding large box and a basin of water. He took approximately a second to survey the scene, and proceeded to march over, set the items he carried down on the desk, and yank the book out of Sun’s upraised hands.

 

“Just what were you planning to do with this, Sun?”

 

Sun looked perplexed. “Uh… save Cedar from the bug?”

 

Starlight rolled his eyes toward the ceiling as if praying for patience, and unceremoniously thwapped the freckled doll sharply on the head with the book. The force wasn’t enough to injure, but certainly looked enough to smart, judging from the way Sun reflexively put both hands on his head with a deeply offended expression.

 

“You idiot, does he _look_ like a bug to you?” Starlight gestured pointedly at Brother’s hands. Brother obligingly shifted his grip and let the others have a better look at their guest, though he still kept one hand securely wrapped around Jackson’s torso. The huge dolls all looked as surprised as Brother and Starlight had been when they first saw Jackson.

 

Starlight continued, “We found Jackson injured by a building, so we were going to patch him up before returning him to where he came from. And _you_ , Sun, nearly just made everything ten times worse.”

 

Sun and Cedar both looked immensely sheepish once they realized their mistake.

 

“I’m sorry for calling you a bug,” Cedar meekly apologized, stepping down from the bed. “I didn’t know people could be so small.”

 

“I’m sorry, too,” Sun chimed in, playing with his fingers and looking ashamed, his loud voice subdued. “If I’d have known you weren’t a bug, I wouldn’t have tried to squish you.”

 

“I should hope so,” Jackson retorted huffily, still silently willing his heart rate to return to normal. It fluttered wildly and erratically against Brother’s palm, and he felt more than a little faint. His stomach churned nauseatingly. “Bug indeed, sheesh.”

 

The kitten, meanwhile, leapt down from its perch on one of the dolls’ shoulders onto the desk, craning her neck back and standing up on her hind legs, as if trying to get a better look at him.

 

“I think Heart wants to say hello, Jackson,” Brother said, smiling, as the kitten gave a little inquisitive chirrup.

 

“You sure she doesn’t want to eat me instead?” Jackson replied, dubious, torn between caution and delight at the little cat’s cuteness. She _was_ bigger than him after all, more than twice his size. And her teeth looked quite sharp. But he’d never seen a cat in person before, and they looked even cuter in person than they did on TV. And her fur looked _so_ soft…

 

“You won’t try to eat him, will you?” Brother asked the kitten. She sneezed daintily. “I think that means no.” He lowered Jackson to a few inches above the desktop and let Heart approach, removing his other hand so that Jackson was simply sitting on the palm of his left hand. Jackson reached out tentatively. Heart sniffed at his fingers politely, and then unceremoniously shoved her fuzzy hand under his palm. Catching her meaning almost immediately, he ran his fingers through her silky fur. She leaned into his touch, purring, and he let out a delighted little laugh. It was just like petting one of Birdie’s stuffed animals, only _better_ , because Heart was warm and alive and he could feel the vibrations from her purrs travelling all the way up his arm and resonating in his chest.

 

He reached out with his other hand and deftly scratched under her chin while continuing to massage her head, and she closed her eyes in bliss, leaning more heavily into him. His heart rate gradually began to return to normal, and he felt himself start to truly relax for the first time since leaving Birdie’s room. It was official: kittens were the _best_.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

While Brother didn’t have the odd weakness for cute things the way Starlight or Cedar seemed to, even he had to admit that the sight of the tiny brownie giving the slightly larger tiny kitten a thorough head massage _was_ incredibly adorable. Starlight had visibly melted, and Kitten and Cedar weren’t faring much better. After a few seconds of this, Starlight, looking extremely reluctant, scooped Heart up in one hand.

 

“As much as I hate to break this up, I do need to get his leg bandaged and cleaned so he stops losing blood, and I can’t really do that if we have an audience getting underfoot,” he said in response to Heart’s yowl of protest, making as if to give her back to Kitten. Before he could do so, however, she wriggled free of his grip, clambered up his shirt sleeve, and crawled onto his shoulder, rubbing her little black head against his cheek and purring even louder. Starlight stood no chance against such a devastating attack and crumbled in about two seconds.

 

 “Alright, fine,” he muttered, trying to keep up an annoyed façade as Heart continued to nuzzle his cheek and neck. He failed utterly. “You can stay and watch as long as you don’t get in the way, okay?”

 

Heart mewed happily and hunkered down into a little loaf on his shoulder.

 

“As for the rest of you, shoo, give me room to work,” Starlight ordered, flapping his hands at the other four dolls and herding them to the other end of the room.

 

“Why does the _cat_ get to stay, but we don’t?” Laughter pouted as Cedar tugged him along, nearly dropping the large plastic bag he held because of the other doll's haste.

 

“Because she asked nicely, now get going.”

 

That done, Starlight returned and opened the first aid kit, all business, while Brother seated himself on the desk chair, holding Jackson off the desk so that Starlight could work easier. First, Starlight carefully cut away the tattered remnants of Jackson’s pant leg with a small pair of scissors he’d found in the first aid kit, fully exposing the deep gashes in his flesh. He then gently tugged off the blood-soaked shoe on his foot and set it off to the side before wetting a cotton ball in the basin of warm water he’d retrieved from the bathroom and began the laborious process of swabbing away the blood and dirt coating Jackson’s leg. Only a few seconds in, though, Jackson abruptly yanked his leg away from Starlight’s fingers.

 

“I can’t do it,” the brownie whimpered, swiping a sleeve across wet cheeks. “I can’t, I just can’t, it hurts, it hurts too much, I _can’t_.”

 

“I know it hurts, Jackson, I know, and I’m sorry, but it needs to be done,” Starlight coaxed gently, brow creased in sympathy. “If bits of dirt and rock get left in, your leg won’t heal right, and it’ll just be more painful later. And if you keep losing blood…” he trailed off suddenly, biting his lip and looking reluctant to finish that thought for some reason.

 

“And look at it this way,” Brother added, trying to be comforting. “It could be worse.”

 

“How could it possibly be _worse_?” Jackson retorted incredulously, stress and pain making his words sharp. Brother stared at him for a moment, half expecting that Jackson was messing with them. But no, Jackson seemed completely serious about that statement. A flash of inexplicable fury ignited in Brother’s gut. Clenching his jaw so hard that it hurt, he impulsively gripped the hem of his shirt and yanked it up, revealing a large, pale, jagged scar bisecting the entirety of his midsection. Jackson’s teary eyes widened at the sight.

 

 “Trust me,” Brother retorted simply. “It can _always_ be worse.” He pulled his shirt back down and averted his eyes from the little brownie’s shocked gaze, feeling oddly, uncomfortably exposed as his anger gradually faded, replaced by a familiar, creeping, nauseating chill traveling down his spine-

 

_(She was in a good mood today, which was bad. Bad things always happened when She seemed this happy. Bad things always happened when She was angry, too, but somehow Her being happy just made it worse. He had been the unlucky one to get singled out that day, and lay helplessly before Her, wrists and ankles lashed tightly to Her table as She rifled through Her tools. He was terrified, naturally, but he made sure not to let it show, keeping his face carefully neutral. She finally turned to him, smiling widely in anticipation, and proceeded to push his tattered sweater up, exposing his midsection and lower chest. Once his sweater was carefully tucked out of the way, She unhurriedly ran her hands down his exposed flesh, tracing every dip and curve and bruise and scar until She reached his hips. He was unable to suppress a shudder at the sensation of Her cool, soft hands sliding across his bare skin, Her touch a cruel, twisted mockery of something that should have been comforting and intimate._

_She then took up a marker and delicately drew a curved, dotted line across his abdomen, holding him still with Her other hand. His breathing sped up unconsciously at the touch of cold ink on his skin, his fear getting the better of him as She discarded the marker and instead hefted a large, razor sharp knife in one hand. She unceremoniously sliced open his belly in one smooth, fluid motion, which he had expected, though it didn’t make it any easier to bear. What he **didn’t** expect was Her suddenly dropping the knife and plunging Her hands deep into the huge gash She’d just created. _

_She was … inside of him…_

_As he realized this, a new, horrifying feeling that was beyond pain, beyond fear, beyond sorrow flooded his awareness even amidst the blinding haze of agony consuming his mind._

_She was **inside** of him… _

_Tears started to trickle down his cheeks of their own accord, and he didn’t - he **couldn’t** \- stop them. _

_She was **inside** **of him** -! _

_Something intangible within him shattered just as an involuntary scream finally tore itself from his throat. She simply laughed delightedly, continuing to paw carelessly through his insides, touching things that were never meant to be touched, and it hurt, everything hurt, it hurt hurt hurt, oh, **oh** how it **hurt** -! _

_He’d gone away at some point, retreated into some far recess of his mind where he no longer had to feel the pain, the horror, the sickening violation of Her presence within his body. But he had to come back eventually, and when he did, tasting blood and bile in his mouth, he found himself lying in the warm, secure embrace of Kitten – who had at that time been Broken – instead of alone in his own cage, which was the day’s only small mercy. True, it hadn’t felt like it at the time, since his first reaction to registering the sensation of hands on him again was to panic, crying out in terror and thrashing weakly in Broken’s arms as he clawed at the older doll, at himself, still feeling the phantoms of Her vile touch slithering nauseatingly through his guts as he muttered a hysterical litany of “go away, get off, get off, get out, get off, go away, get out, get out, get **out** -!” _

_But Broken had been nothing but patient and gentle with him, firmly pinning his arms to his sides so he didn’t hurt himself further and pressing his face into the base of his throat. His slender fingers stroked the younger doll’s hair comfortingly as he finally began to sob convulsively, trembling and heartsick and so, so afraid, feeling like he’d never be able to escape the sensation of Her hands inside of him, contaminating him, tainting him, how disgusting they made him feel, how dirty, how gross, gross, **gross** , he was so **gross** -) _

A light touch to his cheek and a sharp, stinging pain in his knuckle snapped Brother out of it. He blinked to find Starlight gazing at him tenderly, sadly, cupping his cheek in one hand while he drew Brother’s knuckles away from his mouth with the other. He’d bit down so hard that his teeth had already left a livid bruise, just one of many blemishes already decorating the flesh there. Brother sighed softly and let him do it, closing his eyes and leaning into Starlight’s gentle touch as the older doll brushed away the moisture threatening to spill from Brother’s eye with a deft swipe of his thumb. Brother relished the feel of another’s warm skin pressed against his own with defiant triumph as he reoriented himself in the here and now. This was real. He was fine, they were fine, they were _free_. She couldn’t hurt him anymore. She would never hurt any of them ever again, and as the others had consistently shown him over and over, nothing that she’d done to him would ever change how they felt about him.

  

A shifting of pressure in his palm made him look down to see Jackson looking back and forth between the two dolls, an unidentifiable look on his face. Finally, Jackson took a deep breath and silently offered his bleeding leg to Starlight again. He didn’t voice another word of protest as Starlight resumed cleaning and bandaging his wounds, simply reaching out and pulling Brother’s thumb to his chest so he could hug it tight. Brother was taken completely aback at this immense display of trust, any lingering traces of the irrational flash of anger he’d felt earlier dissipating completely. After all, he had to admit to himself, if Jackson didn’t know how much worse his injuries could have possibly been, it wasn’t his fault. He shouldn’t be angry at him for that. It would be like the soda boys being angry at the dolls for not knowing how to read.

 

An odd surge of fierce protectiveness swept through Brother as he felt tiny droplets of water wet his thumb, felt the little construct tremble as he whimpered quietly in pain. He lifted one finger and began to run it up and down Jackson’s back comfortingly as Starlight worked, pondering this strange feeling. He’d never felt this way about anyone or anything aside from his five brothers before. But Jackson was so little and helpless and hurt… he was no threat to any of them, surely. Brother found himself wanting to actively prevent any more harm from coming to him, even if he wasn’t one of his siblings. It was a… strange feeling. Brother wasn’t quite sure what to make of it, but decided he’d deal with it later.

 

Once Jackson’s leg was entirely swathed in clean, white bandages, Starlight studied his handiwork for a moment before something seemed to occur to him and he disappeared into the bathroom. He returned with some water in a cap from one of the pill bottles.

 

“Here, Jackson, try to drink as much as you can,” he urged, holding the lid out to the brownie. “It will help with all the blood you lost.”

 

Jackson looked dubious, not to mention so tired it looked like he might fall asleep right where he sat, but dutifully tried his best to follow Starlight’s suggestion. After most of the water was gone, he pushed the cap away and just sat there on Brother’s hand for a moment, trying to catch his breath. His face was almost ashen grey, no remaining color in his cheeks or nose or lips at all. His entire body swayed visibly with fatigue now that the adrenaline had worn off. Brother knew that feeling very well and silently sympathized.

 

“Are you alright, Jackson?” Starlight asked, crouching down to be at eye level with him. On his shoulder, Heart gave a concerned little mew. “Do you want to sleep for a while?”

 

“Mmm…” Jackson gave a noncommittal hum. “Think ’m gonna crash…” he observed, the syllables of his words slurring together negligently. He listed to the side and curled against Brother’s cupped fingers with a tired sigh. “Just… need a sec. Wake me up in… five minutes…” With that, the little creature’s eyes fluttered closed, and he went limp, nearly tumbling out of Brother’s hands before the doll managed to catch him just in time.

 

“Um…” Brother glanced up at Starlight helplessly. “What do I…?”

 

Starlight tapped his lips thoughtfully with one finger. “Well, I was going to suggest making him a place to sleep on the desk… but it would probably be better if someone held him, now that I think about it. It would be warmer, and that way we can keep an eye on him easier. I could take him if you want?”

 

“No, it’s okay, I got him,” Brother found himself saying, instinctively drawing his hands closer to his chest.

 

“Oh.” Starlight looked slightly disappointed, but brightened up almost immediately. “Well, alright then. Hey, Laughter?” he called to the back of the room.

 

“Yeah?” Laughter turned in their direction.

 

“Can we borrow your hat for a bit? The one that we found by Cedar’s trees?”

 

“Uh. Sure?” 

 

“Great!” Starlight trotted over, unceremoniously yanked the knitted cap off Laughter’s head, paused for a moment to smooth out the other doll’s ruffled hair affectionately (Laughter made a face, but otherwise tolerated it), and returned with his prize with a parting “Thank you, Laughter! We’ll return it soon, I promise!” over his shoulder.

 

Once Starlight returned with the cap, he and Brother worked together to maneuver Jackson inside it. Brother carefully rearranged Jackson’s limp body so that he lay carefully cradled across his hand and arm, held close to his chest, while Starlight pulled up the knit material of the hat and tucked it securely around Jackson’s tiny shoulders. Once they were as situated as they were going to get, Brother took a seat on the edge of one of the beds, and Starlight waved the others over.

 

The rest of the dolls migrated back to the other side of the room while Brother and Starlight filled them in on the situation. Brother noticed that Sun still seemed rather subdued, and he kept glancing guiltily at the snoozing bundle in Brother’s hands. He stood near the fringes of the group, still playing with his fingers absently as Starlight showed everyone the candles and Kitten and Cedar set out the food. As the tantalizing smells from the large, white buns wafted through the air, Heart gave Starlight’s neck a parting nuzzle and lightly jumped down from his shoulder. She galloped over to where Kitten had seated himself on the edge of the other row of beds beds with a bun and a large, lidded, clear cup filled with a bright, yellow liquid. Without missing a beat, she scrambled up his pant leg to sit in his lap and meowed at him vociferously, pawing at his sweater until he obligingly fed her a morsel of the dark substance inside the bun.

 

Sun scooted over closer to where Starlight stood, cleaning up the soiled cotton balls and bandages he’d used to treat Jackson “Are you… still mad at me, Starlight?” he asked tentatively. “I didn’t mean… I wouldn’t want to.... It’s just that Cedar was scared, and I wanted to protect him, and I…” He trailed off again and swallowed hard, looking down at the floor. “I’m sorry.”

 

Starlight’s face immediately softened at Sun’s contrite expression, and he enfolded him in a tight hug, which the taller doll gladly returned. “I’m not mad at you, Sun. I know you didn’t mean any harm. Just be more careful next time, okay?” He leaned back and patted him on the shoulder while glancing at the rest of them. “That goes for all of us, I think. It’s good to be cautious, and good to want to protect each other, but there are so many things in the world that we haven’t learned about yet. I’d hate for any of us to accidentally hurt someone just because we assumed something that turned out to not be true.”

 

As everyone nodded in agreement, Sun spoke up, voice back to its usual bright and cheerful timbre, “Earlier, you said… that the tiny one, Jackson, he said he was created?” At Starlight’s nod, he continued excitedly, “That must mean he’s like us! Is he getting energy from you, then, Brother? Do you feel it?”

 

Brother frowned thoughtfully and focused hard on the little body in his hands, but there was no telltale tingle that signified that his own energy stores were being drawn upon to help someone else heal. He shook his head at the others. “No, I don’t feel anything.”

 

“Then that means he needs to be returned to whoever his creator is as soon as possible,” Laughter added, tugging at his bangs absently. “Without his creator, or at least his brothers, he’s not going to heal quickly at all.”

 

“How do we know his creator can be trusted, though?” Brother protested, feeling strangely reluctant at the thought of handing Jackson over to someone they knew nothing about. “They could be like _her_ , or at least similar, and he just doesn’t know any better.”

 

“True, they could,” Starlight agreed, looking pensive. “But they could also be like Yoojung. Besides, something that small, they wouldn’t be able to take what _she_ did to us. They would break irreparably. And your scars, Brother. They surprised him, I could tell. I don’t think he would be surprised if he was used to such things. Plus, at this point, it doesn’t really matter what his creator is like; he needs to heal as fast as possible, and the only way he can do that if we return him to where he came from. He could break irreparably if we don’t.”

 

Brother had to concede the older doll had a point. That didn’t mean he had to like it, though. Starlight must have noticed Brother’s conflicted expression, since he immediately crossed the room to sit on the bed beside him, wrapping his arm around Brother's waist and pressing himself close against his side. Brother, for once, didn’t protest, and simply dropped his head to rest against Starlight’s with an inaudible sigh. “Don’t worry, Brother. I’m sure he’ll be just fine. Just because he’s small doesn’t mean he’s not tough. Now, let’s get our food before Kitten eats it all.”

 

Kitten looked up at the sound of his name, cheeks stuffed full. “What?”

 

“Like I said.”

 

 

 

 

 

 


	5. My Home

Jackson was warm. He was warm, and surrounded by comforting softness, with something occasionally stroking his hair lightly, and wow, this was nice. Quite nice. He snuggled deeper into the softness surrounding him with a tiny, content sigh.

 

Although… now that he thought about it, he hurt pretty badly, too, which was… markedly less nice. He tried his level best to go back to sleep, to get away from the pain steadily encroaching on his consciousness, but it was of no use. He was awake, and quite unhappy about the fact.

 

“God, what happened? Did JB run me over with Nora again?” he croaked groggily, feeling his face scrunch up in discomfort, still unwilling to open his eyes and face reality. “No, never mind, this hurts way worse, _owwwww_.”

 

“Jackson?” came an unfamiliar voice above him, and Jackson’s eyes snapped open in alarm. He nearly had a heart attack when he saw Brother’s gigantic face looking down on him in concern, before his brain remembered where he was. “Are you okay? Do you need anything?”

 

“A time machine and some chocolate would be great, thanks,” Jackson groaned, reaching up to drag one hand down his face. Even that one simple action took much more effort than he was accustomed to. He was just so _tired_. And sore. Don’t forget extremely sore. “And all my muscles feel like limp noodles.”

 

“Noodles…?” Brother murmured, looking confused for a moment before sudden understanding dawned on his face. “Oh, you must mean you can’t move very much. Right?” Jackson nodded weakly. “Ah. Don’t worry about it, then, it’s normal. That was a lot of blood you lost, after all. Your strength will come back eventually once you rest some more.”

 

Before Jackson could process all the implications of that, namely how Brother could so nonchalantly comment on people losing blood like someone else would discuss the weather, a voice from out of his line of sight piped up. “You’re awake!” Starlight came into view and crouched down to be at eye level with Jackson. He patted the brownie’s head carefully and fussed over his makeshift blanket/sleeping bag, smoothing out the fabric absently as his eyes darted here and there over Jackson’s tiny form, accessing his condition. “Are you feeling any better? Would you like to sleep some more?”

 

Sleeping more sounded heavenly right then, actually; Brother’s hands were so warm and his hat bed was so soft, and Starlight’s gentle petting felt so very nice, that, for a moment, all Jackson wanted to do was burrow right back under the covers and forget all the soreness and tiredness for a little while longer. But then he caught sight of the sky outside one of the room’s huge windows, the beautiful reds and oranges streaking across the huge expanse, and promptly forgot all about his fatigue.

 

“Wait, it’s sunset already?” he exclaimed, sitting up straight in Brother’s hands. “How long was I asleep?”

 

“Not too long,” Starlight assured him. “No more than a few hours.”

 

“A few _hours_?!” Jackson yelped in dismay. “That’s too long! Birdie will be home by now, she’ll be so worried! Not to mention my brothers, they must have been looking for me all afternoon! I need to go home! They need to know I’m okay!”

 

“Jackson-”

 

“Please, Starlight, please!” Jackson begged, catching Starlight’s finger in both his hands and gazing up at the huge doll imploringly. “Please, I need to go home!”

 

“Okay, Jackson, okay,” Starlight soothed, carefully curling his thumb and forefinger around Jackson’s hand and pressing gently. “We’ll take you home, don’t worry. We need to know where your home is to do that, though, and we’re not very familiar with this place yet.” He glanced over at the other dolls, who had all gathered around while Starlight and Jackson talked. “I think we’ll need the soda boys’ help for this.”

 

“I’ll go!” volunteered Sun, bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet energetically.

 

“I’ll go with you,” Cedar offered, stepping up to stand beside the shorter doll and protectively hooking his hand around his elbow.

 

Starlight nodded at the two of them. “Alright. Hurry back, we want to get him home before it gets dark.”

 

As Sun and Cedar departed, Starlight got up as well and returned with something in his hand, which he presented to Jackson after sitting next to Brother on the gigantic bed. “Here, I saved you a little bit of this. Rocky called it a bun, I think. It might help you heal faster. Eating always helped _us_ heal faster, at any rate.”

 

Jackson’s mouth immediately watered at the sight of the small, white morsel of bread soaked with a bit of brown gravy, and he accepted it eagerly. “Thank you!” He’d taken exactly one large bite before what Starlight had said caught up to him, and he looked up at the dolls in concern. Craning his head back to look at Brother, he swallowed his bite of food and asked tentatively, “How… did that happen?”

 

Brother stared at him blankly. “What?”

 

“Your stomach. Your…” Jackson grimaced, remembering the brief glimpse of the other numerous scrapes, gouges, gashes, and tears in Brother’s skin that he’d seen before the other had pulled his shirt down again, “...everything else. How…?”

 

“Oh. She did it.”

 

“She?”

 

“Our creator. It’s what we were made for. You were asking how she played with us.” He shrugged. “Well.”

 

“Your…” Jackson’s jaw dropped in horrified disbelief, nearly unable to comprehend what he was hearing. “Your _creator_ did all that do you? On _purpose_?”

 

“Well, yes,” Brother replied, confused. “I’m at a loss as to how you could do that to someone accidentally.”

 

Piece of bun forgotten, Jackson leaned over, grabbed Brother’s nearest finger, and wrapped his arms around it tightly. “I’m sorry.” His voice came out muffled and tight-sounding, and he had to blink back tears for a few seconds. “I’m sorry.”

 

Brother looked even more confused, if that was even possible, and looked over at the other three dolls helplessly. The others looked just as bewildered as him, except for Starlight, who just looked very sad.

  
“Why are you apologizing?” the one called Kitten finally asked in a quiet, gentle voice, a jarring contrast to his stoic appearance. “It’s not like it’s your fault.”

 

“No, but I’m still sorry. No one deserves to be treated that way. I can’t even imagine Birdie playing with us like that.” And he legitimately couldn’t; his brain outright refused to contemplate the concept. He shuddered, and gave Brother’s finger another squeeze. A horrible thought occurred to him, and he looked up at the dolls with wide eyes. “Where is she now? She’s not going to do it again, is she?”

 

“ _No_ ,” Starlight said sharply, fiercely. “She’s gone.”

 

“And she’s not coming back,” Kitten added quietly, pressing the hand of the doll next to him, the one with the Xs in his eyes.

 

“Good,” Jackson said feelingly, so relieved that it surprised him a little. He’d barely just met these people, these huge, living dolls, but they were good and nice and had helped him so much even when they didn’t have to; the thought of them being in as much pain as he had previously been in – inflicted by their own _creator_ no less – made his heart ache for them. “I’m glad.”

 

Starlight’s eyes grew soft and slightly misty, and instead of replying with words, he reached over and stroked a finger over Jackson’s hair again, letting his smile say everything his voice didn’t. He then nudged the discarded crumb on the knitted cap Jackson was still partially tucked into. “You should finish this before they get back, if you can. Knowing Sun, it probably won’t take them long.”

 

“Okay.” Jackson gave Brother’s finger a last reluctant squeeze before letting go, picking up the food again, and taking another bite, this one much smaller than the last. Somehow it wasn’t as appetizing as it had previously. Starlight looked very satisfied as Jackson began to eat again, though, so he gamely kept at it as the doll began a steady stream of light chatter that quickly lifted the atmosphere of the room back up, even managing to draw in Brother and the doll with the odd eyes – who Jackson learned was named Laughter – into the conversation at certain points.

 

Sure enough, a few minutes later, noise could be heard coming up the stairs, and the door to the room opened. Cedar and Sun entered, followed by a tall, lanky youth with hair so pale it looked nearly white. Of course he was tall, Jackson noted with slight disgruntlement. Everyone Outside was just stupidly huge, apparently. At this rate he was going to get a permanent crick in his neck.

 

The newcomer immediately made a beeline for Laughter first, grabbing onto his arm excitedly. “Laughter! Rocky told me you want to learn how to play guitar! I’ll finally be able to play with someone! Oh, this will be so much _fun_ , I can hardly wait to get started! We’re gonna have your first lesson the _second_ we get back, how does that sound?”

 

“Can’t wait,” Laughter replied, smiling but looking rather discomfited by the enthusiastic physical contact. “But you have to _go_ first before you can come back.”

 

“Oh, right!” the pale-haired Big Person abruptly let go of Laughter’s arm (Laughter looked more than slightly relieved) and glanced around the room until he caught sight of Jackson in Brother’s hands. He bounded over and bent down, down, down to look at the brownie. “Hi! You must be Jackson! I’m Sanha.” He offered his finger to the brownie to shake. Jackson decided he liked him already. “Sun and Cedar said we need to take you home. Could you describe where you live for me?” 

 

“Well…” Jackson thought hard. He could describe the inside of the apartment and store perfectly, but he’d never expected to have to consider what the outside looked like or how to find it from a distance. “Birdie - that is, our girl - her papa has an antique store. He also sells toys. There’s a convenience store close by that she gets snacks from, and there’s a music store somewhere nearby, too, I think, where she gets her sheet music for her piano lessons. It’s called… Beat? Something something Beat?”

 

“Born to Beat?” Sanha said, recognition dawning in his large, dark eyes.

 

 “Yeah! You’ve been there?”

 

“Been there?” Sanha scoffed. “I got my guitar at Born to Beat. Sungjae, one of the guys who works there, he helped me pick it out. I’m sure we’ll be able to find your home eventually if I can just find the music store again.”

 

“Great!” Sun crowed, Jackson briefly too overcome with relief to say anything immediately. “What are we waiting for? Let’s get going!”

 

“Hold on, Sun,” Starlight said, reaching out and snagging the other doll’s sleeve as he marched toward the door. “Maybe it would be best if some of us stayed here. Brother and I found Jackson, so we should be the ones to return him, but I think having everyone around might be overwhelming for Jackson’s family, especially if they’re all as small as he is.”

 

“You’d probably be right,” Jackson said wryly, having found his tongue again. “I can guarantee that the six – well, seven – of you probably wouldn’t even fit in the apartment at the same time. Or at least, it’d be very crowded, and someone might get stepped on.”

 

“There, you see?” Starlight said. “It shouldn’t take long for us to get back, there’s no need for us all to go. It’s safe there, right, Sanha?”

 

“I don’t see why it wouldn’t be,” Sanha replied. “Rocky’s been that way dozens of times during his deliveries, he’s never had a problem.”

 

None of the other dolls looked particularly enthused about the prospect of splitting up, but they accepted the verdict with a minimum of fuss.

 

“Hey, aren’t you forgetting something?” Laughter spoke up as Starlight and Brother got ready to go. He held out a hand and made a grabbing motion with it.

 

“Oh, right.” Starlight looked down at Jackson apologetically. “Is it alright if we move you a little, Jackson? We borrowed Laughter’s hat to use for your bed.”

 

“Sure,” Jackson replied, smiling at Laughter gratefully as Starlight carefully lifted him out of the warm, knitted material and cradled him in his hands as if he were made of glass, meticulously checking over his bloodstained bandages. Moving still hurt, but definitely not as much as it had before. “Um, thank you, by the way.”

  
“Yeah, sure,” Laughter waved him off, jamming the hat back on his head after Brother pressed it into his hand. “Happy to help.”

 

As he spoke, and as Jackson was trying to figure out if he was being sarcastic or not, Brother stepped over to the desk, picked up a little green shoe that was surprisingly less bloodstained than Jackson remembered (someone must have washed it while he had been asleep), and slipped it into his pocket. “Alright, I think that’s everything.”

 

“Off we go, then!” Sanha said cheerfully, leading the way out of the room and down the stairs. Jackson was almost too excited to think about anything other than being reunited with Birdie and his brothers, but he remembered to wave goodbye to the other four dolls just in time before Brother closed the door behind them.

 

The streets of the Sash were still pretty bustling even at this hour, so progress wasn’t as fast as Jackson would have ideally liked, though considering “ideal” would have meant “instant teleportation,” the brownie supposed he should be grateful for small favors. At least he didn’t have to walk there himself. His leg gave a painful twinge just at the thought, and he grimaced, trying his best to keep his mind off how horribly sore and exhausted he still was by asking Sanha a dozen questions about his job and the D.Store, which the construct was only too happy to answer for him.

 

After they’d walked for about ten minutes through the twisting, turning streets, Sanha finally stopped at the corner of one bustling intersection and put a hand on his chin thoughtfully. He hummed critically, closely observing the busy throng of Big People travelling to and fro.

 

“Is there something wrong?” Starlight asked, absently stroking Jackson’s shoulder comfortingly as the brownie curled closer into his chest, wearily resting his head against Starlight’s shirt. He was just so _tired_. But he couldn’t fall asleep yet, he had to stay awake until they got home.

 

“No, not exactly,” Sanha replied. “I’m just trying to figure out where to go from here. There’s Born to Beat, by the way.” He pointed to a relatively large store nestled in between a bookstore and a perfume shop a little ways down the street, a sign over the door proclaiming “Born to Beat” in bold, black lettering, superimposed over a blue and white stylized trumpet shape. “Hey… I think that’s Sungjae now, actually. Maybe he could point us in the right direction to get to your home, Jackson!” Without waiting to get a consensus from the others, he hurried down the street, weaving through the crowd of Big People, leaving the dolls no choice but to follow as best they could.

 

As they got closer, a young man came into view, sweeping the sidewalk in front of the store. Yet another unfairly gigantic Big Person, too, by the looks of it. Why was Jackson still even surprised at this point.

 

“Well, hello there, Sanha,” greeted the young man, smiling widely as they all approached. He clapped a hand on the taller boy’s shoulder as soon as he was within arm’s reach. “Long time no see! What brings you to this neck of the woods? Are these your friends? Sorry, I don’t think we’ve met before.” He held out his hand to the two dolls and Jackson, wavering between the three of them like he wasn’t quite sure who to give his hand to first. “I’m Yook Sungjae, glorified janitor, errand boy, makeshift stepladder, occasional instrument entrepreneur. What can I do for you today?”

 

“I’m Brother,” Brother said, taking Sungjae’s proffered hand, as Starlight’s were otherwise occupied. “These are Starlight and Jackson. Jackson here got separated from his family, and we were trying to return him. He says he lives near an antique store near here that sells toys.”

 

“Do you know of any place like that?” Sanha asked as Sungjae finished shaking hands with Starlight, who’d finally gotten a hand free, and with Jackson, holding the brownie’s hand carefully between a thumb and forefinger.

 

 “Ah, you must mean April Story,” Sungjae said, leaning back and resting most of his weight on his push broom. “Small storefront, kind of rustic looking, some tiny dolls on display in the front window that dance from time to time?”

 

“Yes!” Jackson cried, nearly overcome with relief again. “Yes, that’s the one! I’ve only seen them a couple times myself, since Birdie’s papa never lets us go in the store, but that’s definitely the right place if there are dancing dolls! Six of them, right?”

 

“Yup,” Sungjae confirmed, looking very pleased with himself. “The very same.”  

 

“Well geez, I could have probably found it if you told me it had a name,” Sanha observed, pouting a little.

 

“Sorry,” Jackson said, flushing. “To be perfectly honest, I don’t think I could have told you even if I remembered it had a name; I’ve only heard it a handful of times myself. It’s just ‘the store’ to us; there really aren’t any other ones of note in our normal, day to day lives, so…”

 

“Hey, don’t apologize, it’s fine,” Starlight soothed. “We know its name now, and that’s all that matters. So,” he turned his attention back to Sungjae, “where is it, exactly?”

 

“Go down the street thataway, take a right at the jewelry store, down the alleyway, and keep walking until it opens up into a backstreet. The April Story should be a few dozen yards further,” Sungjae said pointing up the street to a place Jackson couldn’t quite see.

 

“Thank you,” Starlight said gratefully, shaking Sungjae’s hand again. “You’ve really been a great help.”

 

“Aw, it’s no problem,” Sungjae replied easily. “Glad I could be of assistance.” He looked down at Jackson and grinned. “I hope you get home safe and sound, little guy. You’ll have to come by again and visit sometime. We have a lot of cool stuff here, you know. I think we may even have some appropriately scaled things for individuals of your, ah, stature.”

 

Jackson wanted to protest being called little yet again, just on principle, but ultimately decided against it, instead smiling up at the huge Big Person as widely as he could. “I’d like that! Birdie takes piano lessons, and I’ve always wanted to be able to play with her, but her piano’s too big. I’ll tell her I met you when I get home, maybe she’ll bring us over sometime."

 

“Sounds like a plan,” Sungjae smiled back, nodding at them all. “Nice to meet you all. Have a good evening.” He went back to finish his sweeping, and the dolls started down the sidewalk again.

 

“You coming, Sanha?” Brother asked. Starlight halted and turned as well, and Jackson saw that the tall construct hadn’t followed them, instead glancing from them to the music store and back again, looking torn.

 

“Actually… is it okay if I meet up with you when you get back?” Sanha asked, fidgeting in place a little. “I was actually thinking of stopping by here to get Laughter a guitar pick for his first lesson anyway, and it occurred to me that I could do it now, so we can all head home quicker when you get back. Since we’re already here and all. Unless…” A concerned expression crossed his face, “If you need me to come with you, I don’t mind waiting to get it; I wouldn’t want you to get lost or anything-”

 

“I think we can manage a block’s worth of walking,” Brother interjected wryly. “Go ahead and get what you came for, it’s alright. Out of curiosity, though, what exactly is a ‘guitar pick’?”

 

“It’s a small tool that helps you strum the strings,” Sanha explained, miming the action to demonstrate. “You technically don’t need one to play, but it helps a lot, especially when you’re first starting out, because the strings can hurt your fingers.”

 

“What’s this I hear about guitar lessons?” Sungjae asked, eyes alight with interest. “And who’s this ‘Laughter’ person?”

 

“Laughter is Starlight and Brother’s brother. He can’t see very well, but he still wants to learn how to play guitar, and _I’m_ going to teach him,” Sanha declared, puffing out his chest proudly.

 

“The day has come at last! The student has become the master!” Sungjae slapped Sanha on the back while making a show of wiping nonexistent tears from his eye. “Well, come on inside, venerated sensei, I’ll show you what we currently have in stock. I think Changsub recently got back from his grocery shopping, too.” His smile took on a slightly manic edge. “Say, speaking of which, want to see me break a watermelon with my forehead? He bet me five gold pieces I couldn’t do it in one smack, and he’s about to be five gold pieces poorer just as soon as I can get Hyunsik to watch the counter for me.”

 

Sanha looked absolutely delighted. “Do I!” He glanced back at the dolls and Jackson and waved cheerily. “Well, see you in a bit, guys! And Jackson, it was nice to meet you. I hope you feel better soon.”  

 

“Agreed on both accounts,” Jackson replied, waving back. He and the dolls then watched Sanha eagerly follow Sungjae into the shop, the blue-painted door closing securely behind them. “Is it weird that I kind of want to see him break a watermelon with his forehead, too?” Jackson remarked as they began walking yet again, glancing up at the dolls. Both of them huffed in amusement.

 

“Well, if you’ll be coming back to visit, you can always see if he’ll be willing to do it again,” Brother suggested, a mischievous glint in his eye.

 

Jackson gasped gleefully. “Hey, you’re right! You guys should come, too, it’d be fun!”

 

“I’m not opposed to the idea.”

 

“You both are way too eager about the prospect of someone giving themselves a concussion,” Starlight scolded disapprovingly, though his small lopsided smile betrayed his amusement.

 

“Sorry, Starlight,” Jackson and Brother chorused together contritely, before glancing at each other out of the corners of their eyes. They lasted about five seconds before they both devolved into giggles, which Brother tried to disguise as a coughing fit, and Jackson didn’t even try to hide at all.

 

Starlight sighed dramatically, rolling his eyes toward the sky, and lightly smacked Brother on the back of his neck with the side of his hand. He then did the same to Jackson with one finger before he could dodge. The three’s laughter drew some odd stares from passersby before Jackson spied something in the distance and gasped again, pointing frantically.

 

 “There it is, there it is!” he cried, gesticulating wildly at the small storefront with floor to ceiling glass windows, displaying all sorts of old gadgets and gizmos and toys. “I recognize the curtains on the second story window up there, those are in the kitchen! Here, here, go around to the back, there should be a door there that people use when they want to go to the apartment. If they want to shop, they go in the front.”

 

The dolls obligingly steered around into the small path that Jackson directed them to, which led between the buildings to the back of the storefront. A green door and some windows looked out into the alleyway there between this row of buildings and the next one over. Jackson craned his neck back as far as it would go, and saw Birdie’s curtains blowing gently in the light breeze. A loud ringing sound made him look back down to see Brother curiously ringing the bell mounted beside the door. They only had a few seconds to wait before they heard footsteps. The door opened, and joy and relief welled up in Jackson’s heart, filling it full to bursting. He was finally, _finally_ home.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

Brother tensed unconsciously as the door opened, not quite sure what they’d find on the other side, but ready for anything regardless. Anything, that is, except for the small, freckled, tearstained face that peeked out at them from behind it, reddened eyes wide and timid behind thick, round glasses. The girl regarded the two tall dolls nervously, seeming scared and intimidated by their presence, but when she spied Jackson, her whole demeanor changed in an instant.

 

“Jackson!” she cried, hands flying to her mouth and eyes filling with tears. Jackson wordlessly held his arms out to her, looking just as emotional as she, and the girl crossed the few steps over to them in an instant. Starlight obligingly deposited Jackson into her waiting hands, and she cuddled him close, crying in relief and joy and showering his little head with kisses. “I was so, so worried! Where were you? What happened? Are you okay?” She leaned back and looked him up and down worriedly, taking in all his bruises and scrapes and the bandage around his leg, and gasped in dismay. “Jackson, you’re hurt!”

 

“It could have been worse,” Jackson tried to assure her, doing his best to wipe away her tears and looking more than slightly teary himself. “I’m just glad to be home, Birdie. I’m so sorry for making you worry so much. I’m okay, really. Starlight and Brother took very good care of me.” Brother’s eyes widened slightly. _This_ was Birdie? This tiny girl?

 

Birdie looked up at the two dolls, apparently having momentarily forgotten they were even there. She still seemed a little intimidated by them, but had relaxed considerably now that Jackson was safe in her hands again.

 

“They’re the ones who found me after that dumb crow flew off with me,” Jackson explained helpfully, leaning tiredly against Birdie as she carefully repositioned him so that she could cradle him in the crook of her arm.

 

“Hello, Birdie,” Starlight said, in the same gentle, patient tone he’d used when speaking to the two children in the butterfly-filled green forest, the one that niggled persistently at the back of Brother’s mind like it was trying to remind him of something important that he’d forgotten. He crouched down to be at eye level with her and offered his hand. “I’m Starlight, and this is Brother. Jackson’s told us a lot about you.”  

 

“Hello,” she replied shyly, consenting to shake his hand after she’d hurriedly wiped her cheeks and adjusted her glasses. “Thank you for saving our Jackson. I don’t know what I would have done if…” she trailed off and bit her lip, eyes filling with tears again.

 

“Hey now, don’t cry,” Jackson chastised, patting her arm comfortingly. “You’ll make _me_ cry again, and no one wants that. All’s well that ends well, right?”

 

“Right,” she replied, sniffling and taking a deep, fortifying breath. “Alright, first things first. You, mister, are going straight upstairs and to bed. When Papa gets home, he can take a look at you.” She looked back up at the dolls and bashfully smiled at them. “You can come in, too, if you want.”

 

“We’d love to,” Starlight beamed, straightening up and following the girl inside the building, tugging Brother behind him by the arm. 

 

The interior didn’t seem all that impressive at first glance. There was a door directly in front of them, another to their left, and then a flight of stairs leading upward. Birdie started up the stairs, so the dolls followed. Brother noticed a strange contraption set directly above of the stairs on the side nearest the wall, a rail with a type of open box set atop it that looked like it could travel up and down the stairs as needed. A series of pictures were hung on the wall going up the stairs, pictures of Birdie with a smiling, dark haired man and woman in some, others with just the man, and one particularly intriguing painting of a starry night sky above a large expanse of water. Brother would have liked to stay and study that one more closely, but there were too many other things to see first.

 

As they reached the top of the stairs, the room opened out into a larger living area, with a couch and chairs and TV and other assorted furniture, beyond which was a kitchen similar to the one in the witch’s house, a small table with four chairs placed to one side. In fact, the whole place reminded him of the witches’ house, a little. It seemed cozy and lived-in, with the brightly patterned curtains and rugs, more pictures and items Brother couldn’t fathom the purpose of hanging on the walls or from the ceiling from strings. Something on the table caught Brother’s eye, and he looked closer to see a smaller table with four tiny chairs placed around it on top of the human-sized table.

 

A few doors led off to different areas of the apartment, and Birdie made a beeline for a white one with a number of bright pink birds painted on it.

 

“Boys!” she called, opening the door and entering. “Jackson’s back! He’s okay!” A cacophony of excited shouts and chatter followed her announcement, and Brother and Starlight paused in the doorway, trying to process the sight in front of them. Six tiny people wearing an odd assortment of brightly colored clothing swarmed around Birdie’s feet, all talking over each other as she knelt beside a miniature house and opened the front, revealing entire rooms and a kitchen and bathroom that all looked entirely lived-in and used. She deposited the injured brownie on one of the tiny beds, and thoughtfully lifted each of the other little people into the room so they could hug and fuss over their missing brother. The chatter had not diminished one bit ever since it started. Brother was a little stunned at the sheer amount of noise seven small voice boxes could make.

 

One of the dark-haired brownies threw himself into Jackson’s arms and buried his face in his shoulder, while one with a prominent pink streak in his pale hair clung to his hand so tightly that it looked like it might actually be a little painful. As Brother and Starlight hung back, unwilling to intrude upon Jackson’s reunion with his family, Brother couldn’t help but uncomfortably wonder what he himself would do if one of his own brothers had gone missing and he had no idea where they were, if they were lost or scared or hurt. He found himself vehemently wishing he’d never have to find out.

 

Brother abruptly realized someone had called his name. “Earth to Starlight and Brother!” Jackson said again, weakly motioning the two dolls over with a weary but teasing smile. To his brothers, he said, “Meet my knights in shining armor, guys. They’re dolls, and they have four other brothers just as tall as them, _and_ they’re living with those guys from the D.Store Birdie told us about. I know they look big and scary, but they’re really very nice.”

 

As Starlight and Brother entered the cheery, cluttered bedroom, much smaller than the soda boys’, one of the brownies stepped forward in front of the others and folded into a deep bow. “We can’t thank you enough for returning our brother to us. I’m JB, and these are my brothers Jinyoung, Mark, Bambam, Yugyeom, and Youngjae. Jackson you’ve already met, obviously.” Each tiny person nodded or waved as his name was said, all echoing JB’s gratefulness in his own way.

 

“You’re all very welcome,” Starlight said warmly, again crouching down to be closer to Birdie and the brownies’ level. After a moment’s hesitation, Brother followed his lead and awkwardly crouched down as well. “We were more than happy to help. Right, Brother?”

 

“Hm? Oh, right, yes,” Brother replied, his eyebrows furrowing slightly as he glanced distractedly at the one dark-haired brownie in a multicolored striped sweater and cap. The brownie looked back at him perplexedly.

 

“What’s wrong?” the little person asked, looking around self-consciously. “Do I have something on my face or something?”

 

“Oh no, sorry, it’s just… your name is Jinyoung, right?” Brother asked. At the brownie’s tentative nod, he said, utterly confused, “But isn’t Jinyoung the name of one of the men from Sweet Girl?”

 

“You’re right, it is,” Starlight replied before the brownie could even open his mouth, eyes wide in surprise. “How can you have the same name?”

 

“Hey, it’s a nice name!” Birdie interjected indignantly, cheeks an inexplicable shade of red. “He used to be named Junior, you know, but he kept wanting to change it, and, well, I just… I thought Jinyoung sounded nice, is all.”

 

“Suuuuure,” the one called BamBam replied, smirking knowingly as the rest of the tiny constructs traded significant glances and snickered. Brother felt uncomfortably like he was missing something important. “That’s the only reason, mm _hm_.”

 

“BamBam, shhhh!” Birdie flailed, turning an even deeper shade of crimson and glancing at the two dolls nervously. 

 

“ _I_ happen to quite like my name, thank you,” Jinyoung-the-brownie said primly.

 

“It is a very nice name,” Starlight told him earnestly. “As long as you like it, that’s all that matters.”

 

“There, you see?” Birdie turned to her brownies triumphantly, placing her hands on her hips. “What do I keep telling you?”

 

“Excuse me, but what is this?” Brother interjected awkwardly, trying to change the topic from the can of worms he’d apparently opened accidentally. He tapped the side of the miniature house. “I’ve never seen a house so small before. How did you get it that small? Is it magic?”

 

“It’s a dollhouse,” Birdie explained, patting the roof fondly, previous annoyance seemingly forgotten. “Papa and the girls made it for me a long time ago, and when I got the boys, it seemed like the perfect place to keep them."

 

“A house for dolls?” Brother parroted in disbelief. “But it’s so tiny!”

 

“I think a better way of putting it would be _you’re_ so big,” said the blonde brownie with the pink streak in his hair – who Brother vaguely recalled was named Mark – with a wry grin, drawing smiles and chuckles from his brothers and Birdie. Brother suddenly had a million questions he wanted to ask, like how the lights lit up, if the tiny sinks actually worked, how everything fit together despite being so impossibly small, but he had no idea where to start. Plus, Jackson looked incredibly tired, having slumped against his dark-haired brother Youngjae, and looked like he was having an extremely tough time keeping his eyes open. Maybe it wasn’t the best time to start grilling everyone on the specifics of the dollhouse’s construction.

 

Birdie evidently noticed Jackson’s condition as well. “Alright, I think it’s time we let Jackson get some rest. He’s had a very big day.”

 

“Sleepover in Jackson and Mark’s room!” the tallest brownie immediately proclaimed, bolting from the room to gather up the pillows and bedding from another of the little bedrooms, closely followed by most of the others, aside from Mark and Youngjae, who seemed unwilling to let go of Jackson even for a moment.

 

Birdie sighed and rolled her eyes. “ _Fine_ , but you better let him get some sleep, alright? No noise, or you’re sleeping in the shoebox for a week, got it?”

 

“We’ll be quiet as mice, Birdie, you won’t even know we’re here,” promised JB, in the process of bundling up a tiny quilt and three pillows and trying to carry them out of his room without dropping them all. “It’s been a long day for all of us, and I think a nap would do us all good.” Brother could hear the unspoken _And we want to keep an eye on Jackson_ loud and clear. The doll very much understood the compulsion for closeness after a particularly close call, and instinctually scooted closer to Starlight’s side himself.

 

Jackson seemed to have followed his train of thought, because he gave Brother and Starlight a knowing, slightly apologetic grin. Addressing the dolls directly, he said, “Well, looks like our visit’s going to be cut short. I’d be happy to give you the grand tour of the place, but Birdie and my bros are getting That Look, and I think if I don’t go to sleep soon, I’ll get smothered with about six different pillows. Now you two come over here so I can give you a hug before I pass out.”

 

Starlight and Brother obediently reached into the dollhouse so Jackson could hug a finger each, Brother reaching into his pocket first so he could hand over Jackson's shoe to one of the other brownies. “You’re the nicest Big People I’ve ever met,” he told them. “Well, you’re the _only_ Big People I’ve ever met, more or less, but still! Promise you’ll come and visit me soon?”

 

“Are you sure it’s okay?” Starlight asked, glancing over at Birdie dubiously.

 

Birdie caught his eye, smiled, and nodded. “I don’t see why not. He likes you. That’s good enough for me.”

 

“Then yes, we promise,” Starlight smiled back in relief, ruffling Jackson’s hair affectionately before withdrawing his hand with obvious reluctance. Brother nodded in agreement, giving him playful nudge on the shoulder and retreating before Jackson could pry his hand away from Mark’s to retaliate. By that time, the others had returned with all their blankets and pillows, so Birdie patted them all on the head once, kissed her forefinger and pressed it to Jackson’s head, and closed up the dollhouse.

 

Birdie led the two dolls out of her room, closing the door gently behind her and letting out a soft, relieved sigh. She looked up at them and smiled, seeming much more settled and relaxed than she had previously. “I’d ask you to stay longer, if you wanted, but I should probably go let Papa know that Jackson’s been found. He’s been out looking for him ever since this afternoon.”

 

“That’s okay,” Starlight assured her. “We need to get going as well. Our other brothers are waiting for us. We’ll be back to visit, though, for sure.”

 

“Alright, then,” Birdie replied, leading them downstairs. Before she opened the door to let them out, she stopped, fidgeting with the end of one of her braids. “Just… thank you again. Both of you. Like I said before, I… I don’t know what I would do if I lost even one of them. I already lost my mom, you see. I can’t lose them, too.” She wiped at her eyes discreetly.

 

“You lost your mom?” Brother asked, concerned. “Where did she go?”

 

“She died,” Birdie said simply, taking a deep, shaky breath. “A couple years ago. She got sick, and she just… never got better. This house used to be hers, you know. And the store. And the brownies, too.”

 

“Jackson and the others?” Starlight asked.

 

“No, they’re not real brownies. Papa made them for me, after mom… left. To cheer me up, you know? I missed her so much. He thought making me some friends that didn’t have prior responsibilities like the girls do would help me.” She smiled, the expression soft and very, very fond. “I don’t know what I’d do without them. Over there is where where the girls usually stay when they’re not tidying up, if you want to see them.” She pointed to a door opposite the stairs, a much tinier door set into the wall right next to it, and opened it to reveal a large, brightly-lit workroom.

 

Multiple tables and several rows of shelves were stocked with bits and pieces both large and small of metal and wood, jars and cans, tools and brushes. On one of the tables, four tiny women in overalls were hard at work constructing another detailed dollhouse. They all glanced over and immediately stopped what they were doing when they saw they had company.

 

“Birdie!” the one in orange overalls with multicolored streaks in her bright blond hair called out in greeting, waving with the tiny saw in one hand and wiping some sweat off her brow with the other. “Any word on Jackson?”

 

“These two found him, Mint,” Birdie replied, pointing up at the dolls. “They brought him back. He’s hurt, but he’ll be okay.”

 

“Oh, that’s wonderful news!” exclaimed the brunette in pink, joyfully clapping her paint-splattered hands. Bright, luminous sparks burst from her fingertips with every clap and fizzled around her like fiery soda bubbles.

 

“Right… Jackson said something about them having magic while he and his brothers didn’t,” Brother murmured to Starlight in realization as the rest of the tiny women enthusiastically echoed their own joy and relief.

 

“Yeah, brownies are naturally magic; it’s how they can tidy up a whole house by themselves despite being so small,” Birdie explained, having overheard. “My mom, she found them living in the walls of her apartment when she was younger, and she let them stay, so they became hers. And she became theirs, and so did the house and store. Even when she’s gone, even after we moved the whole building here, they still take care of us. And me and Papa, we take care of them. They even help him make toys for the store, and they make all the clothes they and my boys wear, though of course the boys help out where they can, too. The boys help me with my room and everything, so the girls don’t have to do that anymore, but the rest of the apartment and store is their responsibility. So yeah, their magic helps them with that, but since my boys are constructs, they don’t have any of their own. That’s okay, though. They get the job done just fine.”

 

“That they do,” the brownie with very short hair and round, rosy cheeks nodded, looking very proud. “Of course, they did learn from the best.”

 

“Humility is a virtue, Myungji,” the one with her hair up in two tails scolded gently, nudging her companion in the side.

 

“So is honesty, Dohee” sniffed Myungji. “I’m just telling it like it is.”

 

Birdie gently closed the door as Dohee and Myungji began to bicker playfully. Brother waved goodbye to Mint and her other sister, who barely had time to wave cheerily back before the door shut completely.

 

“It’s always best to leave them to it when they get like that,” Birdie told the dolls wryly, showing them out the back door. Once she had let them out, she stood in the doorway for a moment, scuffing her foot on the sill. “Well. Goodbye then. It was nice to meet you.” On impulse, the girl darted forward and gave Starlight a hug, her thin, small arms encircling his torso and squeezing tight. “Thank you again. I know I’ve said it a lot, but…”

 

Starlight beamed happily and carefully hugged her back. “It’s alright. We’re glad that we could help.”

 

Birdie let go of Starlight, and then, before Brother could even process what was happening, she wrapped her small arms around his own waist. Brother froze, unsure of what to do or how to react… and then Birdie was darting back in her house and shutting the door hurriedly, cheeks an odd shade of pink.

 

Starlight chuckled at Brother’s slightly dumbfounded expression, and took him by the arm, leading them back the way they’d come. As they were about to turn the corner, Brother stopped and looked back at the small building, at the golden glow emanating from one of the upstairs windows, shining out brightly against the approaching dusk.

 

“What is it, Brother?” Starlight said, stopping as well. He pulled Brother’s sleeve insistently. “Come on, we need to go meet up with Sanha.”

 

“Why couldn’t _she_ have been like that?” Brother asked quietly, almost talking to himself, hands clenching into fists at his sides. “Why couldn’t _she_ have been like Birdie, or Yoojung, or…?” He swallowed, hard. “ _They_ don’t keep their creations in cages. _They_ don’t hurt them or laugh at their pain. They… they _love_ them. They hug them and kiss them and protect them and give them everything they could ever need or want. Sanha and Jackson and the others… they’re… they’re _happy_. They’re not afraid. Not like us. Sun can’t even look at the color red without being reminded of what she did to him there. Laughter can’t learn to read because of her; he even still goes away sometimes, even when she’s not hurting him. Cedar and Kitten are always so scared, all the time, as if they’re afraid something terrible will happen if they let their guard down for even one second. You… you don’t sleep, Starlight. Not as much as the rest of us. You spend so much time looking after the rest of us that you forget that you need to be looked after sometimes, too. And me… I sometimes wonder if this-” He reached out blindly and grasped Starlight’s hand tightly in his. “-is all just a dream, and I’ll eventually wake up to find us all back there with _her_.

 

“And the worst thing about it is, she _could_ have loved us, taken care of us.” Brother suddenly found himself incredibly, desperately angry, so angry that he could barely speak, but he forced out the words regardless, a halting, rambling stream of pure, verbal emotion. “She _should_ have taken care of us, she- We would have stayed! We wouldn’t have run away, we wouldn’t have burned her edifice down, we… we could have been a _family_. We didn’t _ask_ for this, we didn’t- I don’t- It’s not… it’s not fair. It’s not _fair!_ It-!” Brother couldn’t speak anymore, instead biting down hard on his knuckles again as his vision blurred with tears, his anger replaced by a rush of acute, overwhelming grief. Because while any love he might have once felt for her had long since withered away to nothing… he _had_ still loved her. He’d loved her with everything he had, with everything he was, every fiber of his being. Why hadn’t she loved them? Why hadn’t she wanted to be their sister? Their mom? Why had things turned out the way they did? She didn’t deserve his tears, he knew, and yet he still couldn’t help but mourn the lost life they could have all had if things had been just a little different.

 

Starlight didn’t respond. Instead, he simply wrapped Brother up tight in his arms, running his hands up and down his back soothingly. Brother hugged him back just as hard. “You’re right,” Starlight finally said, voice barely more than a murmur. “It’s not fair. None of it was. But you know… it was her choice, to do what she did. To treat us like that. She was the one who threw away any chance we might have had to be a family, not us.”

 

“I know that,” Brother replied, leaning back to look into Starlight’s eyes, willing him to understand just why he was so distraught. “I do. But at the same time, the longer we’re way from _her_ and around other people instead… the more time I spend with _them_ , the more I get the feeling that… she did something to us. Something that won’t heal, won’t go away, no matter how much time we spend out here. We’re not… we’re not _normal_ , Starlight.”

 

“I know,” Starlight whispered, looking so incredibly pained that Brother almost regretted saying anything at all. “Believe me, I can see it, too, Brother. I know we’re not normal. I don’t think we’ll be normal for… a long time.”

 

“What if…” Brother faltered briefly, part of him terrified to give voice to the possibility. Now that he’d started to speak all the thoughts that had been festering in his mind for the past couple of days, though, they came spilling out regardless.  “What if we’re never normal? What if she broke us in ways that can’t ever be fixed? What if we can never really be free of her? What if we’ll always just be her broken toys?”

 

“I don’t believe that,” Starlight said fiercely, gripping Brother’s scarred arms tightly. “Remember what I told you in the children’s green wood? She didn’t create you to be able to read, and yet you can, at least a little. She didn’t create Sun to be protective or creative, and yet he is. She didn’t create any of us to care about anything other than her, and yet we do. We were already more than just her broken toys, Brother, and that was back when she still kept us in cages and treated us like nothing more than things. Just think of what we could become now that we’re away from all that, now that we’ve found a place where people treat us like _people_. After all, if our scars eventually fade given enough time… who knows, maybe after we spend enough time out here, far, far away from her cages and her tools and _her_ , we could eventually fix ourselves and become normal, too. Or at least as normal as dolls like ourselves can be. After all, what’s normal for the brownies isn’t necessarily normal for the soda boys, have you noticed? Normal is… relative, I think. We just need to find ours. Our new normal.”

 

“But _how_?” Brother asked plaintively. “I want to fix you _now_. I want to fix all of us. I hate having to see us all suffer even more when that should all be behind us by now. I just want it to _stop_.” Tears sprung to his eyes again, and it was all he could do to hold them back.

 

Starlight sadly shook his head. “I don’t know, Brother. I don’t know how to make it stop. I wish I did. Every time I try to keep my eyes open for as long as I possibly can so I don’t have to watch you all be hurt and hear your screams when I sleep _and_ when I’m awake, every time Laughter gets lost in his own head, every time Kitten hides his emotions away, every time Sun’s voice goes away, every time Cedar scratches himself, every time you bite yourself, I wish I did. More than anything.

 

“But, there’s one thing I _do_ know, and that’s this.” Starlight reached up and cradled Brother’s face in his hands, looking at him with so much fond tenderness that Brother could barely stand it. “It’s okay to not have all the answers right now, Brother. We’ll figure all this out eventually, and we’ll do it together, all six of us. And in the meantime… well, isn’t it enough that we’re alive and we’re together? _I_ think that makes up for a lot, at least.”

 

Brother let out a watery laugh, letting his head drop a couple inches so that his forehead rested against Starlight’s, heart swelling with answering affection. “Why do you always have to be so sentimental?”

 

“I can’t help it, it’s how I was made,” Starlight replied smugly, giving Brother’s cheeks an affectionate squeeze.

 

“True, I suppose the rest of us will all just have to find some way to cope,” Brother sighed dramatically, only barely dodging Starlight’s retaliatory neck chop.

 

As the two dolls finally disengaged and emerged from the alley, they saw Sanha also emerge from the music store down the street and look around, before spotting them, grinning, and waving wildly.

 

“Come on, Brother,” Starlight said, taking Brother’s hand and smiling up at him. “Let’s go home.”

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

**_Notes:_ **

_**OMG it’s Sungjae!!!** – I know I initially said that Sungjae - BTOB’s maknae and the fourth and final member of Big Byung - wouldn’t be appearing in this fic because I simply couldn’t find a good way to work him into the story, but as I was writing this last chapter out, he just kinda... inserted himself into the narrative almost of his own volition. Weird how that works. Not complaining, though, I’m glad I found a way to include him. ^^ It feels right, somehow. So yes, in this AU, BTOB runs a shop that sells all things music related. The vocal line manages the store in the Sash, and the rap line handles stock and inventory back in their home dimension, though of course there’s overlap from time to time._

_**Big Byung** \- For those of you who might not be familiar with Big Byung (and hey, they debuted 5 years ago, I don't exactly blame you if you're not), it was a temporary group formed by the reality TV show Hitmaker, wherein selected members from established Kpop groups were brought together to form a parody rap group. In this case, said selected members were N and Hyuk from VIXX, GOT7's Jackson, and BTOB's Sungjae. Yes, they do have [an MV](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_coVR9c3Fho), and yes, it is as hilarious as you might expect from this group of colossal dorks. The chemistry the four members had on the show was at least 50% of the reason I wanted to write this fic in the first place, so you basically have it to thank for its existence. XD_

_**The April Story –** From April’s MV, [“April Story.”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIWRyggt-QY) Gotta keep all the little people Kpop concepts in one place. ;) The male actor in the MV is Birdie’s father here, and April themselves are six little dancing doll constructs he made to help attract business to the store. Unlike GOT7 or VIXX, however, the April dolls aren’t truly sentient. They simply dance, sing, and say a few phrases, and that’s about it._

_**Sungjae vs. the Watermelon** – [Sungjae fights fruit.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AOFnbF05Y8) [On a semi-regular basis.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRUsWKP7JGc) [It’s kind of his Thing.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDsNZts8KyA)  
_

_**Junior vs. Jinyoung** – Jinyoung’s stage name was still Junior when “Just Right” was released, so in this AU, that’s what his original name was. He began to want to change it once his brothers started to tease him about it, so when Birdie suggested Jinyoung – after the handsome magician running her favorite café (whom she definitely does **not** have a crush on, stop slandering her, BamBam) - he was all for it, and he's been Jinyoung ever since.  
_

_**Brownies and Borrowers –** This is just my headcanon for how Little People society in this AU works, but essentially, Borrowers live in Big People’s houses without their knowledge and make their livings “borrowing” small things that won’t be missed from their oblivious hosts. Brownies, alternatively, are Borrowers that have formed active partnerships with their hosts, performing household chores and tasks in return for room and board. If this partnership goes on long enough, the brownies in question can form an almost symbiotic bond with “their” homes and the Big People that live inside them, often becoming notoriously protective of said homes and Big People and wreaking havoc on unassuming home intruders. Borrowers, on the other hand, are extremely secretive and non-confrontational, and are much more liable to just pack up and move if they feel at all threatened. Brownies also usually have considerable more magic ability than Borrowers do because of their bonds with their homes and Big People partners, though this isn’t a hard and fast rule._

_**The dolls’ PTSD** – In my mind, Starlight and Brother are the ones most clearly aware of how very much Not Okay they all are, Brother more so than Starlight. Starlight has the (dis?)advantage of being able to remember everything in his life from his creation up to now, whereas all the other dolls only really began to develop clear memories around the time they first became Real. This means that Starlight, horrifically traumatized though he is, has a unique perspective on their situation that the other dolls do not. Brother, alternatively, spent the least amount of time in the witch’s clutches, and therefore has less traumatic baggage to sort through than the other dolls do (this does not mean, however, that he **isn't** traumatized. It just happens to be slightly less than his brothers). This, combined with how perceptive and smart he is, gives him greater awareness into how things are “supposed” to be now that the dolls have escaped, and how, as he put it, Not Normal he and his brothers are when compared to healthy, well-adjusted people like Astro and GOT7._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaand that’s another wrap! As always, thank you for reading. Stay tuned for the next installment of this AU, coming soon to an inbox near you. ;)


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